I shall endure to the end!
by A.A. Pessimal
Summary: In which Aziraphale takes great pleasure in alerting Crowley to the youth at the epicentre of a psychic disturbance in the West Midlands. Victorian England is about to be shocked by the antics of a Great Beast... much to Crowley's embarrassment.
1. Non Serviam

**Possibly the beginning of a longer story in which a Demon we all know and love has occassion to be hideously embarrassed by the antics of a distant relation. This opening chapter may well stand alone for a while until I've worked out which direction the tale will go in and what to include out of a great wealth of real-life subject matter...**

_**Leamington, Warwickshire, England. 1887. **_

Edward Alexander was twelve years old. Beyond fury, in a cold icy rage, he lay motionless and face-down on the bed, assuring himself that one day they would pay for the indignities they were inflicting on him. Oh, the maidservant had been sacked without reference and threatened with the courts for the sexual corruption of a minor. Edward regretted this, not because of the shame and ignominy brought on the girl – they were ten a penny, servant girls, and it had been her manifest destiny to serve the sexual curiosity of the young Superman – but because of the time it would take to persuade the next of her manifest destiny to Serve to his needs. And anyway, They would be watching now, the dullard, stupid, bovine people who temporarily ruled his destiny.

Edward winced from the recent beating, administered at his mother's request by an Elder of the Church to drive out the evil and restore Christ's peace to his soul. One day, when he was grown, he'd grab the rod and break it over the old hypocrite's head. And when he came into his own, to consign the Plymouth Brethren to hell where they belonged. At least he'd be at school soon, away from Their foul clutches. It might be a different sort of hypocritical Christian establishment but just maybe there would be more room, more space, where he could grow and take his own course. He was made to ascend to greatness. This stood to reason. For now, he had to resist the demands of clods and dullards that he descend to their level. He could reckon with then (he twitched and winced as the marks of the lash cut in) later. His day will come.

___________________

Azirpahale took the late summer air in the Jephson Gardens, quietly appreciating one of the fruits of his Arrangement with the demon Crowley. The demon had been given control of Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country; the Angel had taken pains with Stratford-upon-Avon, Kenilworth and Leamington, and today he was looking upon his work and seeing that it was good. He passed the Midland Oak and read the plaque, wondering idly if its boast to be at the very centre of all England was scrupulously correct. Aziraphale felt proud of what he had achieved here: he exchanged a "good afternoon!" with a promenading couple and walked on. Then he felt the note of discord in the Sunday air. It jarred: it felt like the first unwelcome stirrings of a toothache.

Aziraphale, mildly concerned, walked on out into Royal Leamington Spa, looking out over the imposing Victorian majesty of the Pump Rooms, following the river Leam in the rough direction of the psychic disturbance.

Oh, he was no fool as to think nothing evil could ever happen here. If that were not so, then he couldn't get into Manchester occasionally, to deliver the occasional touch of grace and redemption that the Arrangement with Crowley made provision for. If Crowley had passed by, it would have been fleetingly, just for long enough, to add a note of discord to the atmosphere. _But nothing this strong_, Aziraphile thought.

Azirapahale's feet led him into a genteel middle-class suburb of the spa town, the sort of large detached houses favoured by prosperous merchants who could afford to retain domestic servants. _Clarendon Square, _he read.

He paused outside Number Thirty, and sampled the psychic atmosphere. There was no doubt about it: it reeked of corruption, the psychic ether stank and radiated the wrong, discordant, colours, the purply-pink of magenta that alerted anyone with a psychic eye to the presence of sentient evil. 1**(1) **And nobody has a better psychic eye, nor a spirituality finer-tuned for discerning evil, than an angel.

Aziraphale had a moment's qualms about entering the house, worried about the morality of intruding on the privacy of the occupants, but reflected that if God is omnipresent, humans logically have no such thing as privacy from the lawfully accredited representatives of Heaven anyway, and he was surely going about his lawful business by investigating a potent source of evil in its lair.

Moving silently and invisibly, making his being intangible and insubstantial, he followed, moving down the over-ornately appointed hall, noting the lacework covers draping the otherwise exposed legs of tables and chairs from sight.

_I know we wanted the pendulum to swing back the other way from the debauchery and sexual licence of the Regency years, _thought Aziraphile_, but sometimes I wonder if we overdid it. These Victorians are just too prudish and hung-up for words. All we wanted was a little balance in the centre. Too much permissiveness is harmful for a society. But so is too much prudery and sexual repression…_

"Well, I don't know what we can do with the boy now" a male voice said, with a resigned note. "Maybe the Lord knows, but I'm at a loss, Emily."

"You've done your best, Edmund, brother dear." said a female voice. "The boy has just been unmanageable since the deaths of his father and his baby sister. _Some_ gentleness was called for in dealing with Alick. _But I will not have depravity in my house_!"

Aziraphile walked in to a scene of a typically dressed Victorian matron, in widow's weeds, and a prosperously dressed man in middle age who was evidently her brother. He read the air: the usual Victorian background radiation of sexual repression and genteel prudery, certainly, but the evil wasn't here, unless it was in… he paused and took in the prominent Bible and religious tracts on the table. _Plymouth Brethren, _he thought. _One of the strictest Christian sects out. And these are Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. They broke away because they thought the parent religion was excessively lax and liberal._

In much the same way the demon Crowley had to be diplomatic to people calling themselves Satanists, while regarding them as ineffectual amateurs whose sheer amateur nastiness detracted from Hell's public image, Aziraphile was forced to coexist with groups positioned on the extreme fringes of Christianity, like Plymouth Brethren, Scottish Wee Frees, Ulster Presbyterians and American Evangelists. And pretend to like it.

"As the Good Book commands, I took my belt to the boy after his latest escapade." Uncle Edmund pronounced. _"Spare the rod, and spoil the child."_

"Blessed be the word of the Lord" Emily intoned. "I dismissed the Jezebel, obviously. Without reference. A great inconvenience, but what else could I do?"

"I'd like to say I beat the old Adam out of him. But I'm not sure. If I were you, Emily, I'd pack Alick off to a good school. One that doesn't take any nonsense."

Aziraphile sighed, and allowed his essence to float upstairs.

He almost choked on the reek of conscious evil. Self-centredness, Lust, Anger, Pride, and a sense of vicious, wanton,

self-justification. All emanating from the youth lying face-sown on the bed, visible to angelic eyes in an aura of magenta, scarlet, and black light.

Edward Alexander is large for his age. At twelve, he appears fourteen. He is good-looking in a dark, sensuous, way, with a full head of dark hair, full cheekbones and full red, almost womanish, lips. He has certainly had no difficulty in persuading the housemaid to play some enjoyable games with him. The reason he is lying face-down is the thrashing he has lately received from his uncle, who now stands _in loco parentis_ following the death of his father from throat and tongue cancer. A hideous and prolonged death, and one which has marked the young Edward in deep and profound ways which are yet to fully materialise. In comparison, and contrary to his mother's expectations, the death of his baby sister at five months left him barely interested.

To ease the pain. Edward has let his trousers down and his buttocks, reddened and oozing blood in places, are bare to the air, much to Aziraphile's shuddering distaste. Wholly against his uncle's intentions, and in a way that would shock and disgust both mother and uncle, the first of several beatings he is to receive from Uncle Edmund have marked him in a different and more subtle direction. Underneath the pain and the humiliation, he has discovered he actually _enjoyed_ it, in a way he cannot quantify and does not yet have the vocabulary to express.

Edward Alexander has discovered that he is destined to be a sexual sado-masochist.

Aziraphile quickly read all this, and shuddered. He knew it wouldn't be long before Hell homed in on somebody who showed such promise at such a tender age. He wondered what he could do to draw this youth to the Light, but sadly reflected that the Plymouth Brethren had given him a lifelong hatred for Christianity.

He tried a Materialisation.

The boy on the bed turned his head and sneered. The intensity of his eyes shocked Aziraphile.

"My prissy pious mother and her hypocrite brother are praying, are they? Sent you, did they? Thank you for the visit, but I'm not in the mood. Good day to you!"

"You do know I'm an angel?" Aziraphile said, politely. The boy sneered again.

"You couldn't be anything else! Go, and send me a fallen angel! One who can speak to me of Lucifer, the morning star! Because right now, Angel, I am more receptive to His message!"

Aziraphile was impressed at the matter-of-fact acceptance of his Angelic status, and the strength with which the youth was rejecting and dismissing him.

"It doesn't have to be this way, you know…" but his voice tailed off when he saw how completely the boy was blanking him.

"I will return." Aziraphile said, to reassure himself if nobody else, and dematerialized himself to the downstairs room again. He read the minds of Emily and Edmund, if only to find the boy's full name so as to alert Heaven to a problem.

He found the family name.

He goggled disbelievingly.

He looked again.

No mistake.

Then he laughed and laughed and laughed.

_Just wait till I tell the demon, _he thought…

* * *

1 **(1) **Author and occult scholar** Dennis Wheatley – **an associate of Aleistar Crowley in his glory years, and a possible co-member of his ritual magick circles - was adamant that magenta light heralded the presence of sentient evil. He uses this idea in his horror classic _**The Devil Rides Out.**_


	2. The Fields of the Nephilim

_**Crowley versus Crowley part Two**_

_**Prologue:- 3923 B.C. (March). **_

_When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. Then the Lord said: "My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years." At that time the __Nephilim__ appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown._ (Genesis 6:1-4)

_**3292 B.C. Tempters' Training College, Dis (Pandemonium City), in the Sixth Circle of Hell.**_

The demons filed into the lecture threatature, **(1) **and found chilly and uncomfortable seats on benches that had been diabolically designed to not-quite-fit all sizes. As demons habitually come in all sizes and forms, it followed on that there was a lot of chafing, shuffling, irritation and discomfort to spread around.

In his human form, Crowley discovered, quite to his content, that he was one of the better-off demons. The bench was not quite high enough off the ground, his legroom was impeded by the dangling pointed tail of the creature in front of him and the seat-back was fixed to not quite the right angle, but he counted himself lucky compared to the shambling hairy thing in a semi-seated crouch to his immediate left. And on his right…

Crowley hoped this was going to be a short lecture. He didn't feel at home in Pandemonium these days: he'd far rather be up there among the humans, making just enough trouble to get by, and otherwise just lounging in some cool cantina in Ur or Sumer with a long cool drink in front of him and all day to drink it.

And there was another reason why he didn't feel at home in the big city these days. He'd been up there for over a hundred years now, making trouble and generally Tempting, ever since the business with the first humans and the pomegranate. But, in a way, the crystallised reason for his discontent was sitting to his immediate right.

The young, immature, demon sitting to his right was looking up at him through wide hero-worshipping eyes. It made Crowley uncomfortable. Every time he went back to the city, demons would nudge each other and say "Ain't that the demon who….?" And watch him as he passed, mainly through jealous, envious, eyes (or other light-sensitive accumulations of cellular tissue), but with that envious undercurrent of _lucky, lucky, bastard. _

It was universally agreed that bringing about the Fall of the entire human race was one Hell of an achievement, it had been accomplished with style and a pomegranate, and would be one tough act for any demon to follow at any time soon. And that the demon responsible was a low-flier who was poised to descend into the very depths and worth watching. **(2)**

The young demon looked up at Crowley through big eyes.

"Did they tell you what it was about, Mr Crowley?" he inquired, diffidently.

"Kid, just because I did what I did, it doesn't mean the Big L himself takes me into his confidence!" he said, self-effacingly. "Besides, in this place, you're better connected than I am. I was hoping _you_ could tell _me_. After all, your uncle runs this place."

It was true: it was also the biggest reason why Crowley tolerated the company of Wormwood, who hung around his role-model like an eager puppy. Privately, Crowley gave the young demon no more than five minutes up There as a field agent, unless he shaped up and started learning guile and cynicism. He put aside the awful thought that even a dolt like Aziraphile would have no difficulties in Turning Wormwood to the light – the kid was just too Gods-blessed _nice – _and the consequent molten brimstone that would be heaped upon him by a well-connected Uncle Screwtape.

But here was the demon himself, bounding out on the stage in front of several hundred assembled Demons. Professor Screwtape, the senior lecturer in Guile, Deception and Theoretical Temptation, was in his usual body, which had all the look of a long-established family lawyer, right down to the pince-nez spectacles. Only a pair of vestigal horns and the barb-pointed tail gave away his demonic ancestry.

Screwtape stood behind the lectern, and waited a second or two for the hubbub to quieten and stop completely.

"Welcome" he said, in an old dry voice, but one that carried, easily, to the back of the hall.

"You are all perhaps wondering why you have been summoned here today. Especially those of you with experience of field work in the world above."

His eyes passed across the great hall, rested for a second or so on Crowley, and passed on again.

"Allow me to read from the Enemy's Bible."

A groan went up at this, but Screwtape glared it into quiescence.

"Is it not said – or it will be said in their Bible – that the Devil himself may quote Scripture for his own ends?**(3)** This is a sentiment of which I heartily approve. While at the moment, there is only _one_ book of the Bible, and that still a work in progress, rest assured, they will write many more. We are, if I may be permitted a pun, at the _genesis _of great things. We are uniquely privileged. With this end in mind, gentledemons, I shall be incorporating Bible Study for Demons into our curriculum here at the College, and you will no doubt all be called in for periodical refresher courses, so as to use the Enemy's own word against His servants.

"For now, listen to what they are already boasting about, Above.

Genesis Chapter six, verses One to Fourteen."

The demon cleared his throat, and began:-

"_When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose….."_

Crowley listened with half an ear. He really wanted to get back to that cosy cool little taverna he'd found in Chaldea, where they did a really neat fermented-date cocktail…

Screwtape slammed the book closed.

"The cheek of these people! The contempt they have for us! The very thought that they can undermine our efforts at corrupting the human vermin, by seeding their damnable race with a streak of the Divine! Even today, our works are bearing fruit as the human vermin multiply and breed of their own accord, and the first of their souls descend to Hell! For which, by the way, Brother Crowley is to be congratulated. His accumulated demerits and reprimands have been noted and he is truly a demon to be ashamed of. My earnest thanks, Crowley!"

Crowley stood up and took a bow as uncertain applause began. It was uncertain not because the massed demons didn't _want_ to applaud – in an environment like Dis and a gathering like this, more paranoid than any Soviet Communist Party congress with Stalin at the podium, they _had_ to be seen to applaud the demon of the moment. You never knew who was watching and taking notes on who was late to start clapping, who was first to stop clapping, and how much enthusiasm was being applied to the clapping in between times. No, the uncertainty was due to anatomy and asymmetricity: it's easy for a normally proportioned humanoid to bring two equally sized, balanced and opposed forepaws together in order to make noise. Not so easy for cockroach-shaped things to beat foreclaws together, or a lobster-like being to smack its dominant claw against its lesser opposed claw. Indeed, many insectoid, arachnoid and marine nephropidaic-shaped demons elected to loudly click their mandibles together, as the nearest available concept to that of clapping.

And those two dark demons on the dais with Screwtape looked _exactly_ like the sort of buggers who'd be taking notes for use later, Crowley reflected, not liking the way the two dark silent lurkers were regarding him. He wondered what they were here for. They had the look of minor Lords of Hell about them. And Crowley, for all his current infame, was barely a Squire of Hell.

Satisfied, Screwtape cut the applause with a gesture.

"Mr Crowley will soon be returning Above as a key part of this mission." the old demon said. "Now let me explain what Hell requires of you. And why you have been selected for training."

The idea was simple. The idea was terrible. And it provoked retching and vomiting from many of the massed demonic entities. In a single descriptive word, _pandemonium. _

"I never signed up for this!" moaned the huge shambling bear-like thing to Crowley's left. "I never Fell for this! "

"What did you Fall for, then?" Crowley inquired.

The huge hairy Thing turned terrified eyes to Crowley.

"Me, I like frightening their kids, dun' I?" it said. "I go hunting and prowling at nights. Up and down like a bleedin' roarin' lion, looking for the ones who ain't said their prayers and who ain't protected. I get to scare the living shite out of em! Best of it is, half the time their parents think they're imaginin' things."

_The classic bogeyman_, Crowley thought. _But all he's doing is encouraging them to say their prayers. Where's the use in __**that**__, as a long-term strategy? _

"Long nights. Crap pay. But job satisfaction! Hur-hur!"

_Did we get all the idiots when we Fell, _Crowley wondered. _Was it God's way of clearing out the liabilities?_

"The Enemy" Screwtape almost shouted, pounding the podium for silence, "The Enemy is seeking to seed the human vermin with angelic qualities such as _grace! Love! Forgiveness_! "

He spat the words out as if they were curses. "This way He hopes to draw the maximum number to Heaven on their demise! Both as partially angelic beings and as those who, while themselves directly untainted, follow the part-angelic ones who will have the charisma and the leadership abilities to set an example of _goodness_ and _purity_ that the weaker will follow!

"Well, we must rise to this provocation and do likewise. Just as the Enemy is seeding the human vermin with an angelic streak, we, brothers, will rise up and directly introduce a _demonic_ quality into the human vermin! For every Angel, a Demon! For every human female carrying a half-angelic child, there shall be a half-demonic! _And from you will come their fathers!"_

Crowley glanced to his right. Sure enough, Wormwood had gibbered and fainted at the terrible ordeal that lay ahead. He wasn't the only one: many of the massed demons were in a similar state of wailing and gnashing of teeth at the perceived torment that awaited them.

Crowley shrugged. He'd, for preference, adopted the fully functioning body of a human male in his middle twenties, the better so as to do his work on Earth. Function follows form: it followed on that for him, having been in this human body for a hundred or so years, he found human women to be intoxicatingly attractive. Well, _some _human women, anyway.

He'd only laid off the final experiment, with great effort and self-control, because he wasn't sure what Below might have to say about that degree of close fraternization with humans. But if this was a green light to proceed, he was certainly up for it. Wasn't it the case that Lust was one of the Big Seven, after all? He'd certainly damned a few humans by arousing Lust in them, even though he was in the awkward position of the blacksmith who can shoe a horse, cure its ailments, groom its body, call it to docility and silence by application of the Mystical Horseman's Word, and do everything possible to do with horses except for the fact he'd never actually…

He shook off the thought, noting that Screwtape had ended the class. Kicking the insensate Wormwood back into reality, he made to leave, half-dragging the stumbling younger demon with him.

To be stopped at the door by Screwtape and the two dark lurkers.

"Ah, Crowley!" Screwtape said, seemingly benevolently. "Are you not excited at the great trust Hell is placing in you concerning this mission?"

"Ecstatically so, Professor!" Crowley assured him. "Forgive your nephew, by the way. The enormity of the task ahead has somewhat overcome him."

"Indeed" Screwtape said, frowning. "While you're here, Crowley, let me introduce you to the two field commanders who will be leading and commanding Operation Nephilim. This is Duke Hastur and this is Duke Ligor."

"Charmed, I'm sure" Hastur gravelled. Inside his cloak of darkness and damnation, Crowley half-glimpsed beady pitiless red eyes, glowing like coals. Ligur was hardly any more reassuring: Crowley glimpsed ivory-yellow fangs in addition to the psychotic red eyes.

"Heard a lot of bad things said about you, Crowley." Ligur said. Some say you're a flash bastard who got lucky and needs it knocking out of him. Others say you're a demon to watch. Well – we're doin' the watchin', alright?"

"Understood" Crowley said, having noted the threat, and having received another good reason to get out of Dis as soon as he could.

* * *

Tempters' Training College was nothing if not thorough.

The tailoring class knocked up suitable human bodies for those demons whose preferred shape was other than humanoid.

Advanced vocational training was provided by teaming up with the Succubus' School trainees, who provided a certain sort of practical education which Crowley, for one, found energetic and inspiring.

For while demons may take on what general sort of body they choose and have great choice of the skin they feel most comfortable wearing, there are two fundamental things that no demon, nor indeed any creature of angelic stock, may ever alter. Everyone knows about the thing with the eyes. It's the reason why Crowley keeps his covered when working Above.

But the other great absolute that binds Angels and Demons is gender. If your essential nature makes you male or female or neuter – here is this third option – than male you are and male you stay. If you choose or elect to be gay that's perfectly alright – Hell encourages it, Heaven tolerates a certain reality - but a gay male or a lesbian female you remain. Gender is absolutely fixed: preference is your own. Hell being the party of base sensation and heady sensuality, most demons have opted to be fully gendered according to their inner natures. (They have even added a fourth possibility: hermaphrodism, for the terminally indecisive such as the demon Baphomet.)

Most Angels in heaven have opted for the neuter persona. Sex isn't really a part of their lives. But there are just enough fully-functioning male angels for Genesis Chapter Six to have come into being.

And now Hell is preparing its counter-offensive.

Which is why Crowley ended up lying in a soft warm comfortable bed, with a trainee Succubus called Lilith. He'd just had what was possibly the single most pleasurable experience of his existence and he was keen to repeat it as often as he could.

"Fantastic!" Crowley croaked, a warm languorous thrill passing through his limbs.

Lilith giggled.

"I'm so glad Sir appreciated the service!" she said, wiggling her bottom deliciously. Crowley couldn't take his eyes away.

She took the form of a petite, but perfectly formed, human female of about twenty, with kohl-lined eyes and long black hair. The only jarring notes were the vestigial horn-stumps on her forehead and the very tiny tail-stump at the base of her spine. – _you must give them a passing opportunity to realise you're not human but demon, so they can renounce you. It's in the Rules of Engagement decided with Above. _But elsewhere, there was a total absence of cloven hoof, just two perfectly shaped brown legs with a five-toed delicate foot on the end of each.

"Have any of them ever renounced you?" Crowley inquired, feeling no jealousy nor insecurity, just respecting another working demon with a job to do.

She giggled again.

"Never! I bagged one of their High Priests the other week. Fat, horrible, middle-aged with bad teeth, but a girl has to work for her demerits."

She sighed.

"It makes such a change to be with an _attractive_ male!"

She ran a fingertip down Crowley's chest, causing a bliss attack.

Succubi, after all, were designed and trained so as to be virtually irresistible.

"Look, I've got to write a report on you for Old Man Screwtape" she breathed into his ear. "To say that in my opinion you've been adequately trained for field operations and grading your performance. But I need a _lot_ more performance before I can average out a grade…"

Crowley prided himself on being an able student. He applied himself to his lessons with a will.

* * *

Crowley emerged into the human world in a bazaar in Sumer. He shrugged aside various imprecations and implorations to haggle, watching the dust-cloud in the distance and wondering what it portuned as it got closer, down the long processional avenue of the city, lined with drab adobe buildings livened up with earthy, faded, paintwork. He sighed at the _crudity_ of everything - the architecture looked as if it been poured rather than built, and allowed to roughlt dry in the blazing sun. _They must get better at this. They have to!_ Although the street was crowded in the growing heat of mid-morning, there was a woman standing by the wall who was separated from the crowd by a cleared area, as if people were fascinated by her but didn't want to get to near. Crowley watched her, recognising something mysterious: she wasn't wholly human, but was neither angel nor demon. A wisp of red hair – _red_ hair? In a world of black-haired humans? – escaped from her head-dress: with an impatient flick, she tucked it back.

A nebuluous stream of humans flowed past, escaping in front of the dust-cloud. Crowley heard the snapping of a whip, and a grunt of pain. People were moving for cover, and he joined them, his steps taking him towards the mystery woman. She looked at him as if she were not surprised, and gave him a nod.

Then a squadron of royal war chariots passed down a suddenly clear street, the lead driver's whip inducing a laggard pedestrian to give way.

Crowley and the woman watched them pass, the long narrow crudely squared-off bodies made from thick planks of wood, allowing room for a driver and a passenger to squeeze on together in some discomfort, clad as they were in thick linen shifts and ill-fitting boiled leather armour studded with bronze. The wheels were crudely rounded blocks of wood, and the team of beasts drawing each chariot brayed loudly as they passed.

.The red-haired woman shook her head, sadly.

"Pathetic, isn't it?" she said to Crowley. "I should be glad that they've got as far as having an army in less than a hundred years, but they haven't got the hang of chariots, have they? When I popped the idea of them into their General's mind, I rather had in mind something sleeker and sportier, and capable of doing far faster than walking pace on the flat. And look at what they came up with. Something they might as well have hollowed out from a treetrunk, two solid wheels, no suspension and drawn by _donkeys_."

"Amazing" agreed Crowley, as he last of the donkey-drawn war chariots lumbered by at five miles per hour, the donkeys making it patently clear to their human driver that he was lucky to get this much out of them.

"Maybe the technology will improve. You know, as they get better at it. First go at a sophisticated weapon, and all that."

The woman turned to him, and grinned.

"You must be Crowley" she said, extending a hand. "Just call me Red. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of each other in years to come!"

A fight broke out behind them as they entered the cantina together.

"This sort of thing happens a lot wherever you go, then?" Crowley politely inquired. Red shrugged.

"It's in the job description. Ah, the boys are here! Come and meet Black and White."

It takes a long time to get agriculture up to a point of efficiency where it can sustain cities. Or collapse in a devastating Famine.

It takes a long time for humans to get the idea of living closely together in cities for mutual protection, better production of manufactured goods, and establishing safe trade routes for interchange of commodities and information. They usually consider it an acceptable trade-off that so many people living so close together can create ideal conditions for Pestilence to spread.

And of course, ambitious people with ideas start to have seductive thoughts about how better life might be if the city-state down the valley also belonged to us and its people were captured, enslaved, and forced to work in what were formerly _their_ fields for _our_ benefit. People of this mind-set get revolutionary and seductive ideas about what a couple of thousand well-disciplined men could be capable of, if equipped with the best possible weapons.

And thus the Army of Sumer, possibly the second human city, set off to deal with Ur of the Chaldees, possibly the first human city established after the Fall of Eden and the profligate spread of the human race around the Four Rivers of antiquity. And from small unpromising beginnings, Three arose who would grow with the human race throughout its journey. There is a Fourth, but he was there, fully-formed, the moment humans left Eden.

And, as Crowley discovered, anywhere where Red, White and Black meet up for a social drink and a bit of forward planning is due some serious social upheaval. And maybe better chariots next time.

But the war between Ur and Sumer had drawn quite a lot of husbands and lovers away from their cities at a crucial time. A sexually frustrated womenfolk met several hundred Sons of God (although these were rather more _estranged_ Sons of God) who had been assigned human form and put through a class of lessons in seduction by the professionals.

Crowley selected a human female who reminded him as closely as possible of Lilith **(4) **and quietly marvelled at how easy it was to get into her bed. With an eye to his comfort, she was from the upper social strata and commanded a lot of what passed for comfort and ease in this society. Having assured himself of a comfortable bed to do it in, the son of God called Crowley set about having intercourse with a daughter of Men called Bellana, with every intention of her bearing a son in due course (although a daughter who took after Mummy would also serve the purposes of Hell).

Bellana's husband died during that first war with Ur. But a son was born to her not that long afterwards, who was agreed to be the last memory of that dead father. With help from a mysterious visitor from Chaldea, Bellana and her son survived the pestilence and famine that followed the war, and the son grew to be a mighty leader of men and a pitiless warrior in his own right.

Crowley, after thirty years or so, noted a terrible thing happening that he hadn't paid too much attention to in the past. Oh, he'd seen old people doddering about the place, but in the arrogance of being forever twenty-five, he'd taken it as something that just _happened,_ it sort of spontaneously generated a percentage of elderly people wherever there were humans, there was no way of stopping it.

But now it was more personal than that, it was happening to the formerly beautiful Bellana. Her ankles were thickening, her waist widening, her teeth disappearing and her hair greying. And she'd noticed it too.

"_Why are you looking not a day older_?" she shrieked, throwing a small amphora at his head. "_What sort of man – or demon – are you?_" Crowley got out, but not without leaving a purse of gold where she'd find it.

Meanwhile, the Metatron and Beelzebub, confounded at the fact so many half-human, half-angelic, hybrids had been called into existence, concluded a pact. In its essentials, it read something like

1) It's going to blow back in our faces that we created so many of the sods who are almost as powerful as we are.

2) We have to call it quits now – we need a Nephilim Proliferation Control Treaty. No more should be created by either side, except in very narrowly defined mutually agreed circumstances, to be actioned freely and once only by the originating Power at a time of its own choosing. (ie, Project Jesus and Operation Antichrist)

3) The Nephilim in existence now should be curbed and their numbers trimmed back. Although both sides understand it is highly unlikely we'll ever get them all – there are just too many out there for comfort and some sort of Nephilim strain will now always be a part of the human race.

4) We monitor the buggers to identify the streak as it appears in the future.

5) This monitoring job may be delegated to field agents Crowley and Aziraphile.

Meanwhile in the world. Bellana died.

She died at the age of a hundred and twenty, surrounded by loving relatives. Her son the warlord Kro'li, his favourite wives, their sons and daughters, their first grandchildren.

The priest of Moloch closed her eyes and shook his head to Kro-Li. In the hidden psychic twilight, the demon Crowley sighed deeply. He was aware of the presence of the Angel, whose lips were pursed to the point of invisibility and whose arms were quite tightly crossed.

_There are at least thirty humans here and they've all got some of my genes_ he thought. _And that power-mad blood-thirsty sadist is my son? Hell's Teeth. _

He felt Aziraphile's censure on his neck like the heaped coals of Hell. The Angel, to the best of his knowledge, had refrained from the mutually assured headache of making Nephilim and stayed out of the general madness. Aziraphile would have no earthly descendents to complicate things in later years.

Crowley sighed again. He looked round the crowded upper chamber, and then to the corpse on the bed. Had this wizened dried-up wrinkled old woman ever been the beauty he had loved, in his way, a hundred years before?

Soething dark and unseen crossed the room. Even the humans sensed it. Crowley couldn't see it clearly, but for a second there was a hint of a long tall shadowy figure which extended what was perhaps an arm to the woman in the bed. But it was soon gone again. Crowley shrugged. Aziraphale shivered: he'd felt it too.

As if in answer to his unspoken question, Bellana sat up in bed. Or rather, her corpse stayed where it was, but her spirit sat up, blinked, and swung its legs off the bed onto the floor, unseen by all except two sets of eyes in the room.

At first a carbon copy of the wizened old woman, she focused on Crowley, smiled, and as if remembering how to do it, the years started to spin off her. At first hesitatingly, then faster and faster, Bellana's spirit grew younger until she was once more the twenty-five year old who Crowley had chosen as human consort.

"Hello, Crowley" she breathed, kissing him on the cheek. "Now we're the same age again. And I know _exactly_ what you are."

Aziraphile stepped forward.

"Are you ready?" he asked, gently.

"I'm ready" she affirmed. She looked at Crowley with compassionate forgiving eyes.

"I'm sorry, Crowley. I want you to know I never regretted it. But this has to be goodbye. Thank you, anyway, for all you did for me."

Aziraphile made a gesture. A door opened in space. It opened onto a staircase that went upwards. Actinic white light shafted down and there was a suspicion of distant celestial harmony.

Bellana stepped though it, only pausing to throw Crowley a last kiss, and shut the door behind her.

Crowley turned away, a whole new emotion surging through him. The certainty of knowing he'd never see Bellana again. Loss. Bereavement.

Aziraphile took him gently by the arm.

"Need a drink?" the angel said, kindly.

Crowley nodded.

* * *

And over the following millennia, the seed of the Nephilim was nearly wiped out during the Great Flood – in fact, this was the _real _reason why Heaven and Hell conspired to destroy the human race, and start over with fresh uncontaminated stock. But alas for good intention, Noah carried the divine Nephilim spark whilst his wife carried a recessive version of the Hell's Angel. And their sons and grandsons each walked away afterwards with the almost-pure Nephilim essence in them. Not to mention their wives.

And whilst it diluted with every successive generation, the Nephilim seed lived on in Man. And it called to itself, so that some lines of descent kept it in a pure and strengthened condition.

The seer Nostradamus had the seed, as did the witch Agnes Nutter. In both it came out as the talent for prophecy and far-seeing.

The Egyptian priest Ankh-f-n-Khonsu , in 2700 BC, had the Seed.

Ko Hsuan, a Chinese disciple of the great Confucious, and one who prepared the Master's writings for the world after his death, had the Seed.

In 570 AD, a tribal elder advising the prophet Mohammed had the Seed. Meeting him at a desert oasis, Crowley was haunted by a suspicion he'd seen this face before, a long time ago.

Alexander Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, had the Seed. He was a mass of contradictions, this one: a man whose sexual appetites were legendary, who ran the Papacy as if he were an oriental despot, whose own daughter was rumoured to be his mistress, and yet one who commissioned daVinci and Michaelangelo to create great and lasting works of religious art and who appeared to believe – in his own way, in a God of his own choosing. He made Crowley a Cardinal for his own private amusement – again, Crowley was sure he'd met this man or somebody very like him before, a long time ago. But hey, six thousand years, you can't be blamed for not remembering every human, right?

And Croweley very nearly misse Eliphaz Levi altogether, as in the early to middle 19th Century he was based in North America, setting the scene for a civil war in 1861 and some more local nastinesses afterwards. It was only at the insistence of Below that he went to France to look into a gifted Black Magician who had arisen. And of course the Nephilim seed was there, in the Frenchman and defrocked priest Alphonse Louis Constant. Again Crowley had the sense of re-encountering something from a long, long time ago. But he had no time to make more than very basic sense of this, as in 1875, Constant, who had taken the name Eliphaz Levi, suddenly died. **(5)**

Six months later, in Leamington Spa in Warwickshire, England, a child was born to Edward and Mrs Crowley, who drew the attention of the angel Aziraphile some thirteen years later. Crowley's father had had the Seed: this often manifests as one blinding flash of genius inspiration during an otherwise humdrum unremarkeable Earthly life, where a device so simple, so easy, so necessary, is designed and which makes everyone looking upon it go "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"

In the case of Edward Crowley, and the foundation of the family wealth, it was the beer-pump, that simple, elegant, device that adorns most British pub bars even today. Drawing the pump back draws beer up from kegs in the cellar, under its own hydraulic imperative. So simple, so elegant, so aesthetic. Yet designed by a complete teetotaller.

And his son, young Alexander Edward, definitely had the Nephilim seed. The almost pure, demonically inspired version, bequeathed by a certain demon over six thousand years beforehand…

Which is why when Aziraphile triumphantly related his tale to Crowley, the demon slumped slightly and said "Yeah, I know. He's _family_, Angel. My great-great-great-however-many- "great"'s-it-takes-to fill-up- six- thousand- years- grandson. And I'm not getting a good feeling about this at all. What have you got to drink?"

The Angel nodded sympathetically, and quietly thanked God he'd had the common sense to stay right out of all that fields-of-the-Nephilim business. Meanwhile, a demon uncorked a bottle of WG Graham's best port. Normally he liked the satisfyingly meaty organic sound of the cork popping from the bottle. A port cork has a sound all of its own. But for tonight, it was all there was in the London flat . (He was moving stuff over to Austria for a long-term project there, and only a few essentials were still in London.). **(6)**

* * *

**(1) **In other, less fraught, places of learning around the multiverse, it would merely have been a lecture theatre. But demons don't mess around. The implicit threat is "if you don't learn, you're on shitwork for all eternity." The hidden message is "shape up, or you're shovelling the stuff down in the Eighth Circle". For Hell needs its manual labourers to ensure the ditch of the Flatterers is topped up with crap at all times, for the convenience of the yes-people and brown-nosers who are immersed in the stuff for their post-mortem edification. Crowley's brush with the Italian poet Aleghieri Dante, and his input into the **_Inferno_**, may be a future fanfic.

**(2) **As mentioned before, Hell has an inverted sense of values.

**(3**) It's in the Bible somewhere** – **_**"The Devil is subtle and may quote Holy Scripture to his own purposes"**_– but I just haven't been able to nail it down to chapter and verse yet.

**(4)** Although she lacked the vestigial horns and tail-stub, which for a demoness are erogeneous zones.

**(5) **Aleistar Crowley's biographer, John Symonds, opens his biography The Great Beast with a chapter dedicated to Crowley's claimed past lives… Aleistar Crowley claimed to have been all these and more whilst previously on earth.

**(6)** See my story "**The Viennese Job**".


	3. Messing about in boats

_**Crowley versus Crowley part Three: messing about in boats…..**_

**_Co-written by Pessimal, Gaiman and Pratchett after an original idea by God. Original material by God is out of copyright and in the public domain. _**

**The Book of Genesis, chapter six:- **

**6:1** And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

**6:2** That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

**6:3** And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

**6:4** There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

**6:5** And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

**6:6** And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

**6:7** And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

"So we're agreed, then" said the Metatron, from his pillar of clean ice-blue light. The figure standing opposite in a matching pillar of angry scarlet light made a merest incline of the head by way of agreement.

_They worry uzzz too. It's all very well about wickedness being great in the earth and every imagination of the thoughtzzzz of their heart being continually of evil. But it's not OUR evil!_

"Oh, I see. Rebellion being all very well in theory, but not when _we're_ in charge?"

There was a meaningful silence. Beeelzebub eventually spoke.

_You want to drown the whole lot of them like ratzzz in a barrel. _

"It's the cleanest and kindest way."

_And you call __**uzzzz **__evil? You szzzay we are callouszzz? _

There was another pained silence.

"This is an agreed joint effort. To wipe the Nephilim streak out of the human race. We both agree that was a mistake. And to start again."

_Crowley and Aziraphile are to remain on the face of the Earth as observerzzz. Very well. We agree. _

Crowley and Aziraphile looked at each other. The look shared the idea that the coming months and years were going to be more terrible than anything they'd ever seen, and that there was nothing either of them could do to prevent it.

* * *

**6:8** But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

The boatyard stood in a shady loop of the Euphrates. It was usually a hive of activity. A stylite pillar stood at the entrance bearing the logo _Noah and Sons. Boatbuilders since… a long time. All your boating and navigational needs catered for. _

**6:9** These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

**6:10** And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Noah looked up from where he was binding the prow of a papyrus river-canoe, and looked around with pride at his three sons.

"Lads" he said, carefully weaving the papyrus strips into a binding knot, "We have well and truly cornered the market in boatbuilding! They say there's nothing Noah and sons can't build or that they can't float, and I'm inclined to believe 'em!"

"It is the blessing of the LORD, Father!" said Shem, the eldest, in his portentous and pompous voice. Noah's eyes narrowed. That sort of scroll-bashing intensity of religion really wasn't good for _anyone_, least of all a family man who was well into his hundred and eighties.

"Indeed, honourable patriach." agreed Japheth, putting his hands together, palm-first, and bowing slightly.

Noah frowned, suspiciously. He had no reason to doubt Mrs Noah, but sometimes he wondered…

"Right _on,_ poppa!" called Ham, demanding that somebody give him five, whatever that meant.

_I'm going to have to ask her, _Noah decided. _Maybe I've been too busy with the boatbuilding and everything to have noticed, but they tell me there's been a lot of corruption in the earth and weakness and corruption of flesh before God. Can't see the attraction, really, we've got the three sons, me and mrs Noah, and me, I get more interest these days from the lines and curves of a well-shaped hull…_

**6:11** The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

**6:12** And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

Young Canaan came running down the track from the main road out to Chaldea.

"Say what, grand-dad! There's a dude who wants to talk to you. Says he's an Angel of the Lord!"

Canaan, son of Ham, rolled his eyes in his dark face, derisively.

"Just bring the gentleman to me, lad." Noah requested, in his even avuncular voice. "What's his name?"

"Ay-zee-raph-philly!" declared the boy. "What sort of honky faggot name is THAT?"

Aziraphile and Crowley rounded the bend together and entered the boatyard. In accordance with ancient custom, Mrs Noah and Mrs Shem attended them with bowls of water for washing their feet and towels for drying them. Mrs Ham brought wine to refresh them and Mrs Japheth offered chicken wings in satay sauce with sweet chilli dip in the Szeuchwan style..

"Folk say as how you're an Angel of the Lord?" Noah hazarded to Aziraphile.

Aziraphile winced, forced a smile, and reminded himself to stick to the approved script for these encounters.

"Blessed art thou, a man of faith and discernment before the LORD!" he intoned, allowing a little of the Divine Light to show. Crowley obligingly stepped back and to one side. He adjusted the black desert veil he wore, exposing only mouth, nostrils and a wide deep slit of eye socket, to block out most of the heavenly light.

As the extended Noah family ran to watch, the Angel allowed the full spread of his wings to unfurl and open and spread into the air.

"Now I have your full and undivided attention" he said, calmly, "listen to the message of the LORD your god to thee, Noah, boatbuilder!"

Aziraphile spoke, or perhaps the Ineffable or the Metatron spoke through him, for no longer than five minutes. But the message was a terrible one.

**6:13** And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

**6:14** Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

**6:15** And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

**6:16** A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

**6:17** And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

**6:18** But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

"This is all very well, o Angel" Noah said, doubtfully. "But have you got any idea what gopher wood _costs_? I mean, it's not even the best for building a small boat. And Ha-shem the Most High is asking for a boat three hundred cubits long? In gopherwood? It won't last, it'll break up the moment you launch it. And then there are labour costs, look at all the extra labour I'm going to have to hire, this won't come cheap…"

"I mean, gopherwood looks good. But there's a reason why it's called gopherwood. The little buggers like to line their burrows with it, and, well, they breed like gophers. Pull your boat out of water in gopher country and five minutes' flat, it's going to have no outer skin on it, is what I'm saying…"

"Very true, that" agreed Shem. "And three hundred cubits? **(4)** That's longer than we've ever made before. That's a lot longer than anyone's ever made before! What sort of waters are you anticipating? Because something that long with a big load, it's just going to break up along its keel under deep river stress, let alone a tidal ocean…"

"But it'll make our reputation if we manage to build it... everyone in shipbuilding will know it was us. We'll be the acknowledged greats. World-class. " mused Noah, a craftsman presented with a challenge, but otherwise, a man having failed utterly to grasp the implications of the scenario being outlined to him.

"Even the best sailors in the world.." said Japheth.

"Mesopotamians." said Ham, without a shadow of a doubt.

"Kushites" disagreed Shem.

"Me, I'd say Babylonians" injected Noah.

"_Whatever_." said Crowley, firmly.

"I mean, there are some bloody immense oceans out there, lad. But nobody just turns starboard and heads off across the ocean at a whim, oh no. Even the big hero Gilgamesh, right, he took ship, discovered this bloody big place called Africa to the south of us, steered North after that, found the Dragon's Teeth separating two oceans**(5)**, steers a bit further, finds these frozen northern islands, behind the North Wind or something, where the locals amuse themselves by arranging big rocks into circles… **(6)**"

"Savages" said Ham.

"Barbarians" said Japheth.

"He never once went out of sight of land, did he? Found all that just by keeping a coastline in sight to his right hand. I mean, that's _covering distance_, right, it's clocking up the cubits, but is it adventuring? Ponce."

"_When we can get back to the point here_…" Aziraphile insisted. He shot a chilling look at Crowley, who had the good grace to look slightly shifty. _**(7)**_

"And if the Big G's drowning everyone like cockroaches in a drain, yeah, and according to you guys we're the only ones worthy in his sight, why the hell do we need so big a boat?" demanded Canaan. "Three hundred cubits sounds like _work_ to me!"

Aziraphile smiled, grimly.

Ah yes. The little matter of a load on board the boat. Hearken ye to the word of the LORD!"

**6:19** And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.

**6:20** Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

**6:21** And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.

**6:22** Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

* * *

"Get outta town, mother…" Shem clasped a hand firmly over his improbable nephew's mouth.

"Less of that sort of talk, my lad. The Almighty hears it, you're a pillar of salt by morning!"

"And unless we get a move on, a puddle of salty water by evening". Crowley said.

"An enormous puddle" said Aziraphile. "A planet-wide puddle, in fact."

"What's a planet?" asked Ham.

"The thing we're standing on" Crowley said, "which at the moment is mainly dry."

"But where do I _keep_ all these animals meantime?" Noah wailed. "Who looks after them? Who feeds them? And oi vei gevalt, I'm a boat-builder, not a farmer!"

Aziraphile patted his arm consolingly. "We'll work it out." He said. "This is why we've been detailed to be observers on this site for as long as it takes."

"If God wants all this, some actual money might be nice? You know, investment capital?" Japheth suggested, meaningfully. "Confucius, he say rice for tomorrow need much fertiliser today!"

"Oh _dear_," said Aziraphile, as if listening to a new command on a frequency only he could hear. "I _do_ wish they'd make their dratted minds up…"

* * *

**7:1** And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

**7:2** Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

**7:3** Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

**7:4** For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

**7:5** And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.

"Well, does He want them in twos or does He want them in sevens?" Noah shouted.

"I rather think it all hinges on this "cleanliness" concept". Aziraphile said, doubtfully.

"So? All animals look a bit grubby when they've been rolling in the dirt…"

"Mark well my words!" proclaimed Shem. "The pig is an unclean beast as is that which dwells in the sea and lacks scales!"

"Oh, there he goes again!" said Mrs Japtheh. "Look, I don't know what zephyroth of the Kabbalah you're on_**(8)**_, but there's nothing wrong with pigs, alright? They convert rubbish into good clean meat and there is no part of the animal we cannot use for food or other purpose. A sensible religion might declare them holy animals, maybe even name a year after them! You demonstrate to me a pig is unclean, right, and I and my family will stop eating pork!"

"Yay, Auntie Jay!" Canaan cheered. "I tell you, brother, the only thing better than pork is chicken!"

Crowley looked at the three sons of Noah and their wives, then to Noah and mrs Noah, and then back to Aziraphile, doubtfully. While the argument raged on, the angel and the demon sat together under the shade of a palm tree, sharing a jug of fruit juice that Mrs Noah had thoughtfully provided.

"Apparently there's a reason for all this." the Angel said, indicating the three Sons of Noah. "But the Metatron wouldn't go into details. He said it will become apparent when the time is right."

"you know, this grape juice would taste even better, if…" An idea flickered doubtfully at the back of Crowley's mind, and was lost again. He dismissed it, temporarily. "And all this to kill off the last of the Nephilim." mused Crowley. "And it seemed such a good idea at the time".

"After extensive searching, this was the only family we could find in this area with no obvious Nephilim blood." Aziraphile commented. "Nothing to do with basic worthiness before the Lord. But everything to do with his having uncontaminated human blood coming pure down the line from Adam and Eve".

"Heigh-ho." said Anthony Crowley. "Let's get an ark built."

"What are you going to do for money? Heaven's adamant that faith alone will provide."

"And pay for the wood? The nails? And the food bills? And locating the harder-to-get animals? And housing them? Just thank… well, you know - about the biggest secret of all in this thing. Why we don't need to source kangaroos and Antarctic penguins for Noah."

Crowley allowed a few seconds for this to sink in. Aziraphile realised he was beginning to look shifty and uncertain.

"_We've_ got money, Angel. If you and I are going to be stuck here consulting on Project Ark for the next forty-odd years, we may as well be stuck in comfort."

He rubbed his hands together in glee.

"Accounting, watch out for some _serious_ expense statements coming in!"

* * *

_**(1) **_On successful completion of this gig he was promoted Archangel to replace the absconded Lucifer_**. **_A career-demiurge and yes-angel to his wingtips, Michael had been working for this promotion for what he fondly imagined to be, ooh, millenia of hanging around in Heaven staring into a formless void, vaguely aware the Ineffable had something big planned but not knowing what it was, and politely loathing Lucifer for getting the archangelship Michael thought was his by right. He had also suspected that little worm Crowley was a potential subversive and in accordance with predestination, itched to run such squirming things through on his lance, a weapon Heaven had allowed him to supplement his sword. Once he was promoted, more waspish Angels used to hold their noses as Michael passed, on the grounds that the Sin of Pride stank in High Heaven...

_**(2) **_Because it's still only 3700 BC, and nothing's been around for longer than 304 years tops. It's hard to claim antiquity for anything when a lot of it is still in the original factory-fresh packaging.

_**(3) **_An order from the fisherman Zebediah of Chaldea, a nifty little eight-cubits long runaround in the Kushite style.

**_(4) _**A cubit is eighteen inches long. A four hundred and fifty foot ship is a reasonable size for a modern Navy destroyer.

**_(5)_** An early name for Gibraltar.

**_(6) _**Hyperborea – "_Beyond the North Wind_" - the Greek name for Britain. But myth, legend and some history suggests the Greeks were following earlier long-distance sailors.

_**(7) **_Having discovered the primitive British were a happy, indolent, crowd who'd cracked the secret of warm clothes and leak-free houses, who ate well on the ample bounty their clement island provided, Crowley had the directive from Hell to make their lives miserable. Not wanting to hang around for very long in the armpit of nowhere, he'd soon advanced a priestly or druidical class and got them to coerce the rest of the British into painfully hauling huge rocks for many miles, shaping them, and laying one crosswise along the tops of every two uprights, just to show it could be done. He'd left them devising bonuses, overtime pay, differentials, demarcations, strikes and an ability to cuss the rain, and had received a Depreciation from Hell. But the sacrificing of naked virgins to the Moon Goddess was all their own idea, alright?

_**(8) **_Less mystical races than these (it has to be remembered that at this stage of Genesis there is a _sort _of recognisable proto-Judaism, for instance to do with forbidden and unclean animals, but the Jewishness of the rest of the O.T. Bible has yet to evolve) might have asked "what planet are you on?"

* * *

_**Chapter four will follow and conclude the story of Noah's Ark as witnessed by Crowley and Aziraphile.**_

**_It will also answer serious questions like - why are Noah's sons and their families so, er, ethnically diverse and different? (this has been at the heart of Christian theology for a long time and is an interesting tale in its own right)_**

**_One flood or many?_**

**_What does this have to do with 19th-20th century mystic Aleister Crowley? _**

**_All will be revealed in the next brain-damaging episode... going O.T.T. with the O.T., by Pessimal, soon to come._**


	4. God's a bit of a bastard, really

It took possibly forty-five years to build the Ark. From the point of view of Crowley and Aziraphile, this was forty-five years of complete and utter tedium. But it gave the angel and the demon a chance to _really_ get to know each other. There really wasn't an alternative. As circumstances allowed, they would take turns to go off and do what the angelic or demonic temperament called for, elsewhere in the world. Basically, this meant one going off on a long working holiday for between two and four months, while the other held the fort in the boat-builder's yard, putting in a hand's turn along Noah and the boys, and chiding and reassuring whenever his faith in the enterprise wobbled.

"Look" Aziraphile said, as patiently as he could manage.

"Just _forget _about the rodents for now, OK? The… _fast-breeders_, I suppose you could call them. I can assure you, you'll have no difficulty _whatsoever_ in finding a mating pair of rats or mice or rabbits when the time comes. Focus on the large slow ones at this stage of the Plan. The ones who only mate every five or six years and then only produce one offspring after a two-year pregnancy. Lord above knows how two elephants are expected to create a viable population after the… when all this is over. Maybe we should get seven of each, to be on the safe side. And OK, Shem, I acknowledge that you've been illuminated in prayer as to which are ritually clean and unclean, kosher or traife, sorry. Nice of the LORD to tell you before he tells me… All pachyderminous animals**(1)** are unclean in the sight of the LORD, therefore you need to find space for only two each of African Elephant, Indian Elephant, black rhino, white rhino, dwarf rhino and hippopotamus. Now _there_'s a relief. Saves on space, I suppose!""

Aziraphile looked up.

"Oh, hello, Crowley. Travelled far?"

"From going up and down in the world and prowling like a roaring lion, sort of thing." the demon agreed.

"I need a private word with you. About… the secret?"

"Of course" the angel agreed. "Will you excuse us, gentlemen?"

Noah and his family withdrew, leaving what they presumed to be their two angelic guests discussing divine business.

"Listen, they're trying to hide something from us, aren't they?" Crowley pressed. "Like when they said "don't bother with polar bears, arctic foxes, or penguins. Arrangements have been made."

Aziraphile nodded, and looked shifty.

"Where did you get to this time?" the angel asked.

"Atlantis." Crowley said, curtly. "The most civilised place and the most advanced civilization on the bloody planet, this is the first time I have an inkling the wretched place ever existed, and _it's all got to go_. Founded by people of almost pure Nephilim blood who despaired of the barbarians, incidentally, and got together and founded a –place of their own where the Sons of the Nephilim…"

"And daughters" Aziraphile prompted.

"Where the sons _and daughters_ of the Nephilim could breathe free air and found an advanced civilization based on principles of freedom, equality, pacifism and scientific discovery, one that would live and flourish for ten thousand years."

"Except that it's at Ground Zero for the Divine Will, and they'll clock up barely two hundred and fifty." mused the angel.

"They _know_." said Crowley, curtly.

"How are they taking it?"

"Philosophically. They knew the Almighty was out hunting down Nephilim. They're going to go with dignity and they won't beg. No point, really."

There was a silence.

"Sometimes, don't you just want….something… that allows you to blot it all out for a while and think happy thoughts?" the angel asked, rhetorically.

"Almost all the time now, angel. I asked the Atlanteans, but they're opposed to what they call _mind-altering drugs_ of any kind."

"Well, at least we know what to look for."

"Alcohol is apparently a good one. Whatever it is." Said Crowley.

"Anyway. I asked one of their best scientists. I had nagging doubts about the promise that the Flood would cover the whole world to a height of fifteen cubits above the highest land. And you know what he said? He said there's this place out in the big central landmass, this mountain, right, which is nineteen thousand three hundred and thirty-four point six recurring cubits high.**(2). **Tallest thing on Earth. He went away and crunched a few numbers, right, and came back and said "it's all wrong. Even the Almighty is constrained to work with what's already there. To cover the whole world to a depth of nineteen thousand three hundred andforty-nine point six recurring cubits, He is going to need ten times more water than actually exists in the Earth's ecosystem. Take all the polar ice and all the water already in the seas and the clouds, and that totals ten percent of the water it needs for a global flood. _So where's the other ninety per cent going to come from_?"

Azirpahale shrugged.

"Search me." he said. "Maybe it's Ineffable."

"He needs more than just ineffable. He needs several thousand trillions of cubic feet of water."

"Fresh or sea?"

"And that's the other thing. There's a fine ecological balance between freshwater and seawater. Fish that live in one can't survive in the other, and if He goes mixing them all up so that everything is _slightly_ salty – how's He going to restore the rich diversity of marine life afterwards?"

"He is _omnipotent_, Crowley!" Aziraphile reminded him. "Anyway. One of Noah's grandsons is crazy about fish. He's sorting out seven of everything for the aquarium deck."

"Aquarium deck!" raged Crowley. "On a bloody _boat_? On a flooded planet? Covered in, may I remind you, water? The one sort of life that shouldn't need bloody well rescuing, by either twos or sevens?"

"That's a quick change of tune, isn't it? Five minute ago you were fretting over the fine ecological balance of marine life!"

"We need the space, Angel! It isn't infinite, and at some point we should be, you know, _prioritising_. I just happen to think that despite the obvious risks caused by mixing salt and freshwater, fish are… well, a low priority in a global flood. And I like a piece of grilled halibut as much as the next…ma… ang… supernatural entity."**(3)**

"It'll all work itself out." The angel shrugged. "Whether the Ineffable can manage a global flood at this time, or whether He'll settle for doing the best he can with the resources available and organise nine or ten pretty catastrophic localised floods simultaneously, targeted on the major population centres of the world, well, that's His business. We're just charged with preserving one human family here and all the animals necessary to repopulate a new antediluvian ecology."

Crowley considered this.

"Well, the brontosauruses can go for a start. " he said. "Too much room for two creatures!"

Crowley snorted, and returned to the logistics of feeding several thousand animals for nearly nine months. _It'll need another bloody Ark towed behind us, just for the food. And where in Babylonia can I find nine months' worth of bloody bamboo shoots for two bloody pandas? _

He looked up at the immense wall of wood that was growing by the day and blocking out the light. It offered lots of blessed shade to sit in.

_You have to admit, these guys know their stuff as boat-builders. Shame about their utter lack of knowledge as animal-handlers, though. _

Several years later, with the great ship nearly completed and the latest draft of cash advanced unquestionably from Hell available to draw upon, the angel and the demon were again discussing the global picture. They'd travelled enough between them to work out that the one single world-destroying flood was purely Heaven's propaganda to be recorded unquestioningly in the Bible.

The likeliest scenario was that Heaven would blitz the middle-East, the cradle of civilisation, where most members of the human race had opted to remain, not far away from the fabled and lost Garden of Eden. The effects would be felt from Egypt and Hellas in the west right across to Northern India in the East. Smaller but still deadly floods, combined with discreet earthquakes for maximum disruptive value, would target Atlantis, South America, China, Western Europe and Australia.

"Australia?" said Aziraphile.

"Perhaps He doesn't like it." Crowley suggested. "You have to admit, though, splatting Atlantis suggests He's thought about it. As the island is dead-centre of the big Western Sea, right, sinking it it sends out secondary floods and tidal waves that hit the big Western continent along its whole eastern length – this bit here, that's like a fat top half and a long tapering bottom half separated by this squiggly thin bit in the middle. At the same time, . Africa gets it along the west coast, where most of its population live. The tsunamis and secondary flooding also get the cavemen and Stine Age people in the British landmass here and further along this western extension of the central continent – what d'ya call it?"

"Europe." said Aziraphile.

Meanwhile, thumping this place you discovered in the Pacific where the Nephilim also went to ground – Lemuria? Means the tsunamis it causes when it goes under blitz India, Japan, all these little islands, and as far East as the western seaboard of the big landmass…"

"America." said Aziraphile, helpfully.

"Whatever. Sombody's really thought this one through. Economy of effort. Best use of available resources."

"And our trigger is in this middle sea here. The one separating Europe and Africa. You can see here that only a little spit of land, the one between Anatolia and Hellas **(4), **stops the Med from spilling into the Middle East. A little earthquake to take that tiny land barrier down…"

"And it turns everything on our side into a bloody big lake. You might just as well consider the whole world had flooded."

"Exactly, Crowley. By the way, what's the date today?"

"The fifteenth of February, angel."

"Better turn in then. Long day tomorrow."

**

* * *

**

**7:6** And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

**7:7** And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

**7:8** Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,

**7:9** There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

**7:10** And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

**7:11** In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

* * *

As if prewarned, the Angel gave the signal to start loading the Ark on the sixteenth of February. Under a late-winter sky which even this early in the year was cloudless and hot, the humans, an angel and a demon worked incessantly, oblivious to jeers from Noah's neighbours who thought he'd finally lost it. .

The seventeenth dawned. But clouds roiled across an utterly transformed sky. And the first drops were felt.

"What happens now?" said Noah.

"We wait." said Crowley, who had spotted the distant black wave. _But we're a hundred miles inland here…._

He listened to the frightned lowing of the brontosaurs and the low reptilian growling of the tyrannosaurus rexes.

"Shame we couldn't take them." said Aziraphile.

"Be reasonable, angel. Those things would have eaten all the fodder plus all the other animals within a week! Prioritising, remember?"

"To everything, there is a season, and a time to everything under Heaven…"

"Hey, I like that!" said Noah. "You could set it to music!"**(5)**

"Theirs just ran out." said Crowley, flatly.

"A time to live and a time to die, and all that…"

The trigger events happened on both sides of the globe simultaneously.

Massive seismological activity beneath the continents of Atlantis and Lemuria, the twin civilizations of the Nephilim who had turned their back on humanity and sought to live separate lives, shook and threw down the works of the two most advanced civilizations known on Earth. Both nations had considered pyramids to be the most pleasing and logical building design and had built them stronger and higher than ever seen before, nor indeed would ever be seen again. And in the space of a day they, and hundreds of thousands of people, were all but gone.

As the earth beneath their feet subsided and the waters inexorably rose, some took to boats, spent hurtling around like corks in the sheer violence of the turbulent waters. Others took to their air-cars, which owing to principles lost ever after to the world, could stay in the air for months at a time. It would take lesser Man many thousands of years to rediscover some, more debased, principles of creating and sustaining flying craft. But there were precious few of them…. those Atlanteans and Lemurians with access to air-cars sought, with difficulty, to get above the storm-clouds and make it to the relative serenity of the upper atmosphere, where they waited, for the moment unheeded.

But they represented less than half a per cent of the people of the Nephilim race, the vast majority of whom fatalistically succumbed to death as their stricken lands sank beneath the waters, crumbled from underneath by mighty subterranean stresses that had crumbled the very foundation of their continents.

One Atlantean, Lilith Melkor, did not die serenely. Somehow she scrambled to the top of the broken Great Pyramid and clung on there, shaking her fist and screaming in rage at the Ineffable. Over and again, Lilith screamed

_Why did you create us if today you returned to murder us? Why?_

Until, tears streaming down her face, she fell in the wreckage of the shattered pyramid.

A priest called Eiwass, sitting in cross-legged contemplation of pain, death and inevitable rebirth, watched her fall, without pleasure or revulsion, without regret or anticipation. He knew he would be back as his role in the world had not come to an end. Only this Atlantean incarnation had.

And thus passed Great High Atlantis, and thus passed beautiful Lemuria.

As their lands collapsed, waves began in the turbulent seas. Slow and slight at first, they rippled outwards as from a stone thrown into a pond, amassing mass and impetus and speed as they travelled.

The fisherman Bran MacPhoeball clung on for dear life as his coracle jumped and rocked in suddenly turbulent waters.

_Sweet Mananaan_, he thought, _that felt like the very monster Cromm Cruach having a wee bit of a swim and kissing me boat as he passed under it. _He shrugged, welcoming the rain as a chance to gather fresh water, and threw his net again.

The wave that had passed underneath him, rocking his boat in passing, struck the western coast of the Land of Albany as a massive tsunami. The peoples of Danu were decimated and decimated again and decimated a third time by the force of the waters. And by the time the waters receded, the once continuous land of Albany was sundered and its remaining peoples ever more divided. Sweet Eire was made an island, standing proud of that land its peoples called either Prydein or Brigantia depending on locality. In later millennia, cloth-eared Romans would hear both names and bastardize them into _Britannia_, the land of the British. Only its northern waste would remain _Alban_, unconquered by the Romans. And in its turn, Britain would be sundered from Gaul and Belgia, now the nearest points of a greater continent.

Bran would return to devastation, and gather the remnant of his people together. As the High King of new Erin, he would lead a ship west to look for Hy-Breasil, the continent populated by wise and magical people. And he would find nothing, except for scattered islands. And the tale of the Great Flood would live forever in Celtic legend.

* * *

And one such tsunami rushed at the Pillars of Hercules, surging over into the middle sea seperating Africa from Europe. Again, the ripples surged from one end to the other of that enclosed sea, swamping Italy, Greece, mighty Minoan Crete and great Egypt alike with phenomenal loss of life.

In Greece, the dying hero Prometheus was granted a vision of the flood and had urged his son Deucalian to build a boat and stock it with enough of each animal and sufficient seedcorn to ensure a hedge from famine when the waters receded. Deucalion had cause to bless his father's forethought. He and his wife Phyrra finally came to earth again on Mount Othrys in Thessaly when the waters began to recede.

As if making sure, Dardanus of Arcadia was also ordered by the Gods to build an Ark with the usual cargo. He came to rest on the western coast of what is now Anatolia. Scared of another flood, he built no city, choosing to live a twitchy neurotic existence on the dry plain looking over his shoulder for signs of a displeased Poseidon, but his grandson Tros founded the City of Troy on the site where he came to Earth, one of the few survivors of the Great Flood.

* * *

In far Cathay, the Emperor Yao came to grief attempting to intercede with Heaven to turn back a flood, that came suddenly from the Great Sea like a great towering wall of water.

And a nightmare interrupted the Dreamtime, of a great toad who, strewth mate, only went and sucked up all the flamin' water from the seas and rivers and then spat it back out again over the bloody land, didn't he!

* * *

But the inevitable happened.

The press of new water in the Mediterranean threw down the land-bridge of the Dardanelles.

With nothing to stop it, trillions of tons of water spewed over into the space behind, overwhelming the peoples living in the Black Sea region and pouring onward towards the Four Rivers.

It was this tsunami that Crowley had seen in the distance.

As the terrified dinosaurs threw themselves at the walls of their pen, Crowley alerted Noah, who said

"Oh. Right. Yes. Batten down the hatches, everyone!"

**7:12** And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

**7:13** In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;

**7:14** They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.

**7:15** And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

**7:16** And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.

**7:17** And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.

**7:18** And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.

**7:19** And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

**7:20** Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.

**7:21** And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

**7:22** All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

**7:23** And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

**7:24** And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

It was only by sheer good luck, or perhaps divine aid, that the great wave struck the Ark stern-on, lifting it off its supports and setting it afloat on what was steadily becoming an unguessably deep body of water.

Screams and roars and wails from outside, including the press of people who had been begging to be allowed aboard, suddenly cease and all that remained was the roaring of waters.

Noah and his sons looked at each other.

"We did it, dad. Biggest boat ever and she floats! We did it!"

But after the elation laid some seriously hard work for a handful of humans and two supernatural entities.

1 **(1) **It's there in Leviticus, just after the bits everyone knows about kosher animals, which exclude pork and shellfish from Rabbi Lionel Blue's books on Jewish cookery. Elephants, rhinoceri and hippopotami are also meats you will not see in the local Jewish deli, either. Or camel. Or rabbit.

2 **(2) or twenty-nine thousand and two feet high. **

3 **(3) **Several thousand years later, Crowley, in the guise of a BBC producer, blagged his way to dinner with John Cleese and Eric Idle and suggested a spoof movie of the life of Jesus Christ might be fun. It could have, ooh, a stoning scene pointing out the inflexibility of Judaic law, some poor sod being stoned for something trivial… Crowley was stuck for a moment, then remembered that sunny day in the boatyard, and suggested it might be some old buffer saying his lunchtime halibut was good enough for Jehovah himself. For "_**Monty Python's Life of Brian**_", Crowley received another demerit.

4 **(4) Anatolia and Hellas: **modern Turkey and Greece. Aziraphale is referring to what later became the Dardanelles Strait separating Europe from Asia. Modern geologists and archaeologists believe the biblical Flood was precipitated by the erosion of the straits and the final breakthrough of the Mediterranean Sea into what was then a very much smaller Black Sea. This can be fairly accurately dated to nearly siz thousand years ago and explains why just about every civilization bordering the Black Sea, including the ancient Hebrews, has a flood myth This theory also explains why evidence of human habitation, including the remains of small towns, have been found well inside the modern boundaries of the Black Sea and why the sea has the unique anomaly of having a layer of saltwater sitting on top of a deep-down layer of freshwater. Both fresh and saltwater fish apparently live happily at their respective depths.

5 **(5) **From the book of Eccliasiastes. Aziraphile ran it past King Solomon, when he could spare a rare moment away from the duties of looking after a thousand wives.(6) Several thousand years later, he was checking out the hippie scene in San Francisco, remembered Noah's words, and put the idea into the head of a then penniless hippie band called the Byrds. Who very soon eased to be penniless. .

**(6) **Because husbandly duties such as putting up shelves and assembling flat-pack furniture for a thousand wives doesn't half take it out of you, that's why.


	5. Back to Earth, the dear green Earth

_**Crowley and Crowley:5**_

As it had transpired, getting the animals into the Ark had not been a problem, whether it was two by two or in multiples of seven.

The presence of two angelic beings had solved that.

Animals loved Aziraphile: they adored him and wanted to be near him. This could be a bloody nuisance, but out of love they unquestioningly went where they were guided.

Meanwhile Crowley exerted exactly the opposite effect. In barely controllable terror round him, animals _also_ did as they were bidden. Crowley reasoned this was the better route as he didn't have to worry about birdshit down his robes, unlike the angel, wreathed as he was in excited avian incontinence.

He grinned, and focused on putting out a psychic message.

_Look, friend. WE can only take two representative members of your species and there are thousands of you out there. You will take several seconds to replace and you're off this cruise and learning how to swim, kappich? Now are you going to get on tat bloody boat and make your way down to Deck Seven (ruminants and beasts of burden) or do I need to replace you? Oh, I lied: we can take a lot more goats than just you two, but the rest travel gutted and salted in the food hold._**(1)**

He stared at the goat, which blinked back; Crowley nodded, then the goat nudged its mate and both bounded up the gangplank together.

Planning how to feed everything had been a headache. Noah estimated a third of the Ark was taken up with food-holds. Crowley had said "Look, let's be practical here. We've got large carnivores, which only need to be fed every third or fourth day. We've also got fast-breeding species like rabbits and rats and mice which within forty days will have doubled or trebled their populations. Nothing else to _do _on a long sea cruise, is there?"

Noah had looked blank. Crowley spelt it out.

We are only commanded to take two of each."

"Or seven." Noah said, helpfully.

"And that doesn't make sense for some species." said Arpachsad, son of Shem. "I mean, take your social insects, your bees and your ants and your termites. All you need to ensure survival of the species is a single pregnant queen from each. Bung her in a hive or a colony she can call her own, and bingo!"

"By twos, or sevens, or single mothers. Or _whatever_." Crowley said, grimly plodding on.

"The point _is,_ a long time before this barge hits dry land, we're going to have a lot of surplus rabbits and guinea pigs and mice and rats and God knows what else. We also have hungry lynxes, leopards, pumas, cougars, et cetera. What I'm saying is, we'll be breeding a lot of our own food, which spares pressure on the cargo holds. Oh, good grief. _Feed the surplus rabbits to the carnivores_. Am I going too fast for you?"

"I like this idea about dragging fishing nets behind us when things settle down a bit." said Gomer, son of Japheth. "That'll help, surely?"

"For those species that eat fish, yes." Crowley said. "Our _real _problem is the herbivores. How can we carry enough fodder to feed all of them for that long? And even after the waters recede there'll just be a sea of bloody mud there, it'll take months for the grass to grow again!"

_Bloody Heaven and Hell. They come up with all these ideas that look fantastic on paper but they don't have the first flaming clue as to how to make it work on the ground. _

And now Aziraphile and Crowley are in the confined crew compartments of the Ark, as dirty, tired and deadbeat as everyone else with the continual grind of feeding and watering thousands of animals.

In the fifty years or so it took to build an Ark, normal life went on: the three sons of Noah fathered many children, all of whom are of course aboard and helping out. This helps, as nearly fifty people, including anonymous wives and daughters who the Bible does not bother naming, are sharing the chores.

But as the rain still pelts down outside, to patter on the wooden walls of the Ark and to run out through its sluices into the great sea. The crew are gloomily wondering how soon they can at least open a sodding window and get some _air _in here. For another logistic problem has been steadily building up for nearly forty days and nights, despite the clever double-action sluice on the pachyderm deck that allows the dung to be swept up, hoisted away, and tipped into the sea.

"Not till the fortieth day" said Noah, gloomily. "Word of the LORD, is that. Can't gainsay the LORD. Even if it stinks worse than a Philistine's sandals."

"Well, look," Aziraphile said, his habitual fastidiousness having long since been chiselled down into a long internalised gibbering scream. "My associate here has a_… lawyer's_… turn of mind. Maybe he can find a loophole? I mean, what did the Lord actually say?"

_Still not ready to openly rebel? _sighed Crowley. _Even after fifteen days of feet, armpits and assorted animal dung? _

"His actual words, as I recall, were, chapter eight, verse six, _And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: _which on the face of it, I agree, means we can't open any windows till Day Forty."

Fifty people moaned, sighed and grimaced.

"Especially taken in association with what He had to say in chapter seven verse sixteen: _And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in._ The bit about "The LORD shut him in" appears to suggest we're under some divinely ordained bio-mystical containment field here. Granted it stops water getting in and flooding the Ark: and have you noticed, it's keeping the food fresh? But I submit it's no bloody use if we're shut in with our own none-too-fresh smells for another three weeks.

"But the eight or so chapters we've had so far, let me hint to you, say nothing at all about onboard ship modifications to the basic design. I mean, Noah, you're a boat builder, yes? Nothing like this has ever been attempted before, no? So I expect you're chock-full of ideas about how to improve the basic design, which is why you've stowed away several toolkits plus some building materials, just in case repairs are needed.

"If God doesn't want us to open the windows you devised for the ship, he hasn't said a thing about cutting out new ones? Or opening ventilation points in the walls and roof? Ah, good lads, you're getting the basic idea already…"

Crowley grinned, contentedly, as Noah and the sons and grandsons of Noah set to work.

"_That ventilation pipe needs some sort of a hood over the top to exclude the bloody rain and only allow air in"._

" _And if we build in some sort of bloody bellows to circulate air from inside to outside, it'll draw in fresh air of its own accord…"_

Mrs Japheth nudged Crowley in the ribs, smiled serenely, and offered him a cup of green tea. He bowed from the waist, and accepted.

"Ever the Devil can quote Scripture…" Aziraphile said, grudgingly. A gust of blessed fresh air passed over them from somewhere.

"It's a knack" Crowley said, modestly.

"Crowley"

"Yes, angel?"

"Have you noticed? You can explain the lack of any sort of rot or taint in the food supplies by divine intervention, this biomystical field He's put on the boat to stop anything getting in or out. But it's been over a fortnight now. Nobody's had any serious argument, nor indeed any arguments at all".

"That's true. On dry land by now, people would have been throwing punches over Shem's vision of what religion should be. They're just letting him get in with it." Crowley shuddered.

A religious faith hemmed in by thousands of irrational and inconsistent rules, governed by a priestly class who needed the minds of lawyers to interpret the rulebook, with holy days, animal sacrifices, and worst of all, _circumcision _as a test of faith… and one that would aggressively proselytise by righteously smiting the ungodly neighbours in the name of the LORD. Crowley shuddered. Although Hell would assume he'd thought of, what was it now, _Judaism, _and shower him in demerits. The angel went on.

"The animals are all in good health. One of our biggest fears was disease, remember? And it looks like the food and fodder are going to last. When we get into fishing, and, er, recycling (the angel shuddered) surplus animals, nothing's going to starve"

Aziraphile spread his hands and lifted his shoulders in an impressive-looking shrug. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Arpaschad, grand-son of Shem**(2)**, copying the shrug. On him, it looked somehow _right_…

Crowley remembered a weird dream he'd had when physical exhaustion had driven him into a deep restorative sleep.

In the dream, he was in the cantina in Sumer where he'd first met Red, who he'd worked out was the nascent Incarnation of War. Thus far, she'd only been able to spur city states to localised conflict with copper armour and weapons and donkey-drawn chariots with all the speed and mobility of housebricks.

"I know" she sighed. "Such a drawback when they have to agree a truce to bend the swords back into shape and re-sharpen them. I had this idea for a metal called _bronze_ the other day, but what with all this Flood business, it'll have to wait"

"There'll be no need for us for a few years. Not till the human race has re-built itself." agreed Black. "No Famine. There'll be enough to go round." Then he ominously added "_At first_."

White spread his hands in a gesture of despair. "And I had _leprosy_ all set up and ready to go!" he sighed. "It'll be a bugger, that. They'll never be able to beat it. But no point if they're going to be drowned off!"

Crowley nodded.

"So I won't be seeing you guys for a while, then."

"Oh, we'll be _back_, Crowley!" Red said, caressing his cheek. This is… this is…." Red was at a loss. German hadn't been invented yet, although a few proto-Goths were grunting commands at each other in a swamp in what would become the Ukraine.**(3)** So the idea of _auf wiedersein_ remained with her, but the words to express it defeated her.

"This is, temporary will-be-seeing-you-again sort of thing, rather than goodbye!"

"Er…shouldn't there be _four_ of you?"

"He sends his apologies. He's got quite a lot of work on right now, but He will be in touch. Well, goodbye, Crowley! For now."

And Crowley had awoken, to a routine of feeding one end, clearing up after the other, hastily snatched meals, and deep deep blessed sleep. Day after day after day.

* * *

**8:1** And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged;

**8:2** The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;

* * *

After forty days and nights, Aziraphile sensed the biomystical field slackening off. To their joy, the passengers on the Ark realised they could go out on deck again. Even though it was still raining from an almost universally black sky, there were cracks of pink light in the east, and it felt like the end of a rainstorm rather than the beginning.

"Saftey lines and harnesses, everyone!" Noah remembered. "Be a shame if anyone were washed overboard… _oh, my_…"

Even after forty days, there were still a few bloated corpses of men and animals, bobbing accusingly in a sea that stretched to all horizons. _What it must have looked like at first…_

As he watched, Crowley heard a snap, and glimpsed one of the corpses being dragged below the waves, its skin bursting and releasing noxious vapours with an obscene farting sound.

_Still some marine life, then. Sharks? Crocodiles? They're cleaning up. Good. But if anyone from Hell sees this other than me, they'd be running Below with this great new idea for a Tenth Circle…._

"Right now, I could really use some of those mind-altering drugs you found out about in Atlantis." Aziraphile said, weakly. "I don't suppose you got any?"

"Not a chance, Angel." Crowley sighed. "Apparently they had a whale of a time for the first hundred years and seriously partied, worked hard, played hard, then they all decided the thrill was over and went clean all it once. Seen that, done that, wrote the scroll. A bit hard on me since I haven't even _glimpsed_ that, but they just said "tough". _And I missed it. I was stuck in bloody Mesopotamia, wasn't I!"_

Aziraphile sympathised with the missed opportunity, and patted the demon's shoulder consolingly.

* * *

**8:3** And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.

* * *

"I think it's going down" Magog son of Japeth said to Cush, son of Ham, as they pulled the nets in. "Horizon seems a bit closer in today and it's stopped raining."

Cush grunted. He was certain only of one thing: he was going to get as far inland and as far up a bloody mountain as he possibly could, when all this was over.

Behind them, the wives and daughters of Noah and his sons and grandsons waited with gutting knives and buckets for the fish-guts, which would go to animal feed.

**

* * *

****8:4** And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

**8:5** And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

* * *

The Ark rocked and the grating noise along its hull was heard by all onboard. It had finally come to rest.

Crowley went down into the bilges with Shem to check for damage. Fortunately the hull had not been pierced. But they had definitively run aground. This was hopeful, so long as it went. Running aground meant there was now some ground there to run onto.

"What day is it?" Crowley asked. He'd given up shaving and now had a black beard worthy of an Old Testament patriarch.

"Seventeenth of July" said Shem. "'Least, that's the date in the ship's log. Blessed be the day the LORD hath made!"

"Yeah, and strong be the hull Noah hath built!" muttered Crowley. _It had bloody better be. _

**8:6** And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:

**8:7** And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.

**8:8** Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;

**8:9** But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.

"Do you think this is wise, Crowley?" Aziraphile urgently whispered.

"We agreed, Angel" the demon said. "When all this is over, we mess with their heads…"

"_Do a little necessary instruction_…"

"_Mess with their heads_." Crowley insisted. "So that the only thing they remember about us, right, is that _oh, yeah, we had a raven and a dove aboard. So the Boss took it into his head to send them both out looking for land_. Me, I'd have followed those bloody seagulls to find out where they were coming from, but no, Noah wanted a raven and a dove. Some poetical idea about opposites. Well, he's got them!"

Crowley's robes ripped open down the back and his demonic black-feathered wings spread out black against the blue sky. A multitude of species of lesser birds that were nesting on the roof of the Ark's superstructure discreetly got out of the way, including a brace of ravens who had got fat and unathletic on a diet of fish guts and quietly appreciated the demon's thoughtful gesture. Slowly, the immense wings braced, pinioned, and flapped, and lifted him into the sky. Seeing only a raven, the humans showed no alarm and waved him off.

" _Your turn next, Dove!" _Crowley called, as he ascended.

**8:10** And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;

**8:11** And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluck't off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

_Next time, he can send a real bloody dove, _the Angel thought, vowing not to do anything as pointless and stupid ever again.

**8:12** And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.

That dove he sent is in no hurry to come back, is it?" remarked Crowley.

"No, and its mate took off soon afterwards to find it. They pair for life, don't they?"

"Hmm. There seem to be a lot more of those mountains on the horizon today. And isn't that a valley down there? It looks nice and green!"

Aziraphile shrugged.

"Probably seaweed and algae". the angel said, dismissively. By now, his beard was as long as Crowley's, only golden.

"What day is it tomorrow?"

"A new year. The first of January, Very symbolic!"

* * *

**8:13** And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.

* * *

"These rations are really holding out" observed Crowley. I'm sure we didn't pack this much?"

"Divine grace" said the Angel. "You wouldn't understand, of course."

Crowley thought about this.

"You mean…. " he searched for a relevant illustration.

"Let's say that if five thousand people all gather in a remote place in a hurry, right, and only two or three of them packed lunches, then God could make three packets of cheese and chutney sandwiches stretch around all five thousand…"

"And still fill three baskets with the leftovers. Funny you should say that , Crowley… you're absolutely right except for the cheese and chutney. Same principle. Just needs faith!"

Behind them, a disagreement was building on the Ark. Noah was not happy with Madai, son of Japheth and Ark crewman i/c social insects.

"You mean to say…. they escaped?"

Madai hung his head in the face of his grandfather's wrath.

"Well, not so much escaped. I ran out of food for them. So I thought, well, sooner or later we won't need this boat any more. And they, er, eat cellulose. Obvious solution, really"

"The sodding _termites_!" Noah said, through gritted teeth. "And what clue, you know, as to their fundamental diet, is concealed in the name _woodworm_? Think carefully now! And _borer worm._ And _shipworm_. Rings any bells, son?"

"Just as well the waters are receding, really." Aziraphile said.

"Hmmm". said Crowley.**(4) **He salted ideas away for long-term use, and got back to perfecting his lounging. For the last year there had been precious little opportunity.

**

* * *

**

**8:14** And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.

* * *

"At last!" Crowley said, stepping onto blessed dry land that he would never, ever, ever, take for granted again.

"Thirteen bloody months, Angel!"

"Preceded by fifty years of boat-building." muttered Aziraphile.

"Fifty years of my existence I'm never going to get back".

"Well, if we ever get demoted to mere mortal, we've learnt a skill. Could go into business together!"

"Let's say our goodbyes and go… _oh, No!_ Transmission coming through…"

**

* * *

**

**8:15** And God spake unto Noah, saying,

**8:16** Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee.

**8:17** Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.

**8:18** And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him:

**8:19** Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark.

**8:20** And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

**8:21** And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth ; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

**8:22** While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

* * *

The animals left, as meekly and as timidly as they'd gone in. Some animal families seemed a damn sight bigger and fatter than the two or the seven who had originally been selected….

"Oh, good grief!" Crowley said, pounding his brow with his palm. "He was given those bloody animals to repopulate the earth after the Flood, and what is he doing? He's sacrificing one of each to the LORD, that's what he's doing! Is anything more stupid than Man?"

"Well, Shem's advising him on religious matters." said the angel. "It's already provoked rows with his brothers' families. They don't agree with his ideas for a religion and he's being unhelpfully intolerant about it…. I don't know about you, but I'm sticking around a while. Look, they are virtually the only humans on the… in this part of the planet. There's the Job to go back to."

Crowley sighed.

"OK. There's no telling what damage you can cause on your own. And we've both grown _fond _of them over the years."

**

* * *

**

**9:1** And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

**9:2** And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.

**9:3** Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things

* * *

"That's as it _should_ be. Pork's on the menu, family!" said mrs Ham and Mrs Japeth simultaneously.

"And those little pink things, live in the sea, too many legs?" said Canaan, son of Ham. "They're great roasted on a grill, you can never have too many!"5

"No, no, no!" shouted Shem. "I tell thee, these meats are unclean!"

"Well, I don't hear God saying that!"

**

* * *

**

**9:4** But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.

* * *

"Black pudding is _off_ the menu!" shouted Shem, triumphantly.

**

* * *

****9:5** And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.

**9:6** Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

**9:7** And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.

**9:8** And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,

**9:9** And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;

**9:10** And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

* * *

"Look, don't ask me what it means, I'm only the messenger!" Aziraphile said, crossly. "It's for you people to work it out."

**

* * *

**

**9:11** And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

**9:12** And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

**9:13** I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

**9:14** And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:

**9:15** And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

**9:16** And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

**9:17** And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

* * *

"Oh yeah, a _rainbow._ That's never been seen before. That'll carry 'em!" said Crowley.

But it won the families of Noah .

**

* * *

****9:18** And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.

**9:19** These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

**9:20** And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

**9:21** And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

* * *

"Bloody hell, woman, I don't care! After all we've been through, a man _needs _a hobby!" Noah shouted, slamming the door and stomping over to his brewery shed.

He unstoppered an ampula with resentful force, and reached for a glass. Building an Ark had forced technological development in so many areas, including glass-blowing. One of his grandsons, or had it been a grand-daughter, had proven a right little genius with glass.

Now. You were supposed to say something at a time like this, weren't you? Something positive and life-affirming, regardless of the evidence…

"Cheers!" said Crowley, materialising and picking up a glass. "Haven't seen you since the cruise!"

Noah companiably budged up the table.

"Er… mr Angel, is your friend not with you?"

"Right here!" said Aziraphile, who was also holding a glass, expectantly.

And history was made, right there, in Noah's winery, on the slopes of Mount Ararat. And for the first time, an Angel and a Demon got properly drunk together. Oh, they'd had drink before: but this was the first time there had been real actual alcohol in it. Over five hundred years into the history of the human race, this was an epoch-making moment.

"…and then we was tipping the shit over the side, weren't we, and this wind blows up and it was suddenly the wrong side, and Shem got covered in shit, did'ne? Talk about pissing ourselves laughing!"

"And Shem the Samnite was liberally clothed in shit…"

"no, no" objected Crowley. "To make the Bible, right, it's got to be _clothèd_ hasn't it, the full two syllables? Make it sound thing, portentous. With a backward-pointing wossname over the "e"."

The angel and the demon took their leave of a very drunken Noah early the next morning.

"That did me good" breathed Crowley. "I've gorra…got.. a few ideas as to how Noah can improve on his next batch."

"Crowley?"

"Yes, Angel?"

"You don't think… we _overdid_ it back there? He's only human, after all"

Crowley considered this.

"Nah" he said, at length. "He'll sleep it off. Bit of a headache. We can be thing, not drunk, that's it, _sober_ again at will. We'll drop in later in the morning, OK?"

Meanwhile, Mrs Noah was fuming. The trigger that would cause the explosion that would sunder her extended family had just gone off. She'd go to bed, she decided, and send two of the boys to find out what the hell the old duffer was up to. And he'd better have a good excuse!

**

* * *

****9:22** And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

* * *

"Holy _shit_, dudes! You'll never guess…"

"And you never thought to, you know, put a blanket over him or anything?" Shem said, angrily.

"Why should I? Poppa's nearly five hundred and fifty, he's grown up, he can cover his own nudity.."

* * *

**9:23** And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.

**9:24** And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

**9:25** And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

**9:26** And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

* * *

"Servant of Shem?" demanded Ham. "No way!"

"Get outta town, honky!" said his son Canaan.

"Where do you get off with all this Mighty Whitey bullshit, anyway?"

Noah, who was having the mother and father of all hangovers, the Ur-hangover in fact, was in a filthy mood. He looked at his improbably black-skinned so and grandsons and his eyes narrowed.

"Get out of my land." he hissed. And then a word came unbidden to his tongue that could not be called back. "_Niggers_!"

The red-haired maidservant who Mrs Noah had employed the previous day, finding nothing out of the ordinary in another human being appearing who had survived the flood, smiled triumphantly.

Ham and Canaan and their extended families were off the ancestral land by nightfall, heading west and south.

**

* * *

****9:27** God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

* * *

"No" said Japheth, firmly.

"No?" said Noah?"

"No. " Japheth repeated. "You want me to be a lesser servant of Shem. The differences between us are great, my father. We cannot live together. Not under his law. I will accept the service of Canaan and his peoples but I will not, with the greatest courtesy to you, serve Shem. Or we will fight."

And his yellow-skinned son bowed, packed up the effects of his people, and they too left by nightfall, heading east and south. **(6)**The red'-haired maid smiled a terrifying smile.

Racial prejudice and hatred had been introduced into the world. It was a cancer that would provoke many wars, exacerbate others, and it would always be a _banker._ Her work here in the household of Noah was done.

**9:28** And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.

**9:29** And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

Crowley and Aziraphile attended at his deathbed, for the look of the thing. They'd had an experience together, after all.

* * *

(1) Crowley would remember and refine this technique many millennia later when dealing with houseplants.

**(2)** According to lore, Arpashad became the grandfather of that Abraham who is credited with being First Patriarch of the true Jewish people. Thus the Chosen People of Israel descend directly from Shem, eldest son of Noah.

**(3) **The proto-Gothic conversation concerned the vital imperative importance of building a raft of logs and rope, sufficient to carry several families and enough necessary animals so as to outwit ze Flood und ensure Lebensraum afterwards for the Gothic master-race.

**(4) **Crowley, in later years, would cash in firstly on mediaeval superstition by selling licenced pedlars and Pardoners _Pyces of ye True Arkke _for a consideration, like thousands of golden groats. A lot of the mediaeval trade in dubious relics found its way back to Crowley, but even he had to tip his hat to the _master_ con-man who sold no less than three _saint-prepuces, _each claiming to be the only scrap of skin Jesus would have left on earth after being circumcised on Day Seven. In a new superstitious age in the nineteenth trough to the twenty-first centuries inclusive, Crowley would divert Fundamentalist American Christians down the blind alley of searching for the Ark on the slopes of mount Ararat, so as to find solid proof of the Flood. Only Crowley know it would have been eaten to the keel over the years by the cargo of escaped termites, woodworm, and other creatures that appreciated a cellulose-based diet. Meanwhile, it kept the American Fundamentalists safely, happily, and expensively diverted down a very blind alley where they could do no damage.

**(5) **Canaan would be the father of the father of the first Polynesians, according to extrapolations from Biblical genealogies, and to some Creationists is the grandson of Noah whose descendants included Australian Aborigines.

**(6) **Assigning different races to the three sons of Noah was the way early theologians rationalised the post-flood survival of one family with the undeniable visual evidence that there were at least three different races of Man. How could white, black and Asian people all have come form one family? You might as well ask how all the races of Man came about from Adam and Eve alone. They wee helped in this theology by the later genealogies that immediately follow on from the Noah tale, describing exactly where the three sons of Noah chose to send their families to repopulate the Earth. If Ham and Canaan went into Africa, the reasoning goes, then they were evidently Black. If Japheth went into the East, why then, Indians, Chinese and Japanese stemmed from his loins. As Canaan and Ham laughed at their father's nakedness and thuds disrespected him, then the foul Black is evidently inferior, evil and maladjusted and should be enslaved - "_and Canaan shall be his servant_", ie, _slave_. Self-evidently, only the white-skinned son of Noah, Shem, who respected his father and covered his nakedness, should be elevated to the status of Chosen People, one fit under the post-Flood clause of Genesis **9:2** (And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, …into your hand are they delivered. ) to be permitted to own slaves and dictate the lives of black and yellow men. This reading of Xhristianity makes perfect sense as theology – while having little moral worth – and has been used down the ages to justify slave-owning, White supremacy, South African apartheid, and even the Nazi's anti-Semitic ideology. A lovely religion, Christianity. Oh, and some religious Jews use it to justify Israel's rather abrupt treatment of her neighbours, who are only Arabs and therefore "sons of Canaan". Israeli _sabras _are of course the Sons of Shem and righteous in the eyes of the L—d.


	6. In Babylon, but the Great Whore was out

_**I and I say woe, in de Babylon**_

Crowley sat back in the shade of the cantina, his desert-traveller robes concealing his eyes, regarding the strange and somewhat unearthly structure rising in the distance.

"I can't see what the Hell they're trying to achieve, Angel. Atlantis is dead and gone, and they'd do far better trying not to draw attention to themselves."

Aziraphile took another sip of the interesting watermelon-based cocktail.

"I suppose if you were brought up with pyramids, they'd be a wholly natural building style to you. If you were in exile in a strange and foreign land, like this Egypt, you'd appreciate having a couple around. Familiar things."

"They've certainly persuaded Pharoah, haven't they?" Crowley commented. He recited: "The pyramid, composed as it is of five regular sides, is the holiest of buildings in the whole catalogue of paracosmic designs the Great Architect has given to us. Why, it even keeps your shaving razor sharp!"

"Which was" Aziraphile nodded, thoughtfully, "the clincher. "It turned out that the Pharaohess was getting cheesed off at her shavers getting blunt and nicking her legs. So she nagged him until he gave in."

It was a couple of hundred years or so after the Flood, and the subsequent bitter arguments between the three sons of Noah followed by their peeved migrations in three emphatically selected different directions. As far as Crowley could make out, the darker-skinned Egyptians were of the Peoples of Ham, the sons of Noah who had been permanently cursed and told that they would be slaves and servants, ever to be humbled by the whiter-skinned Sons of Shem.

"_The hell with **That**!"_ the sons of Ham had decided, and had set about carving out an antediluvian empire for themselves in this fertile and prosperous corner of North Africa. This had included, once the human race had started to re-establish itself in numbers, like a tenacious weed, the establishment of a new Egypt with the Ham family very firmly at the top, supervising various subordinate castes, including a priestly one that had been expressly told to set up a polytheistic religion, and stamp down hard on any godsdamn subversive trying to spread Shemite monotheism. Another caste firmly subordinate to the Hamites had been a _very_ well-armed military one, that had been instructed to keep the secret of bronze weaponry well to itself. With all due thanks to the red-haired Goddess of War for imparting the secret to a priest while he slept, you got that?

The fertile Nile could potentially feed a couple of million people comfortably, and the new Egypt had grown and prospered, sheltered by its fierce warriors and growing sense of national purpose.

And now it was putting up monuments to its own success. The mysterious Teachers and Guides, who Crowley knew to be refugees from sunken Atlantis, were currently teaching the Egyptian builders to raise Pyramids. Several were rising, the first of many, in what would later become Luxor and the Valley of the Kings.

To speed building, several methods of construction were in use at once. Crowley watched, sourly, as one of the _vimanis,_ the Atlantean sky-machines, locked onto a massive stone block and somehow lifted it into the air, hovering under the rounded saucer-shaped craft. An Egyptian work-crew sat placidly on top of the rock as it ascended, enjoying the easy ride to the top of the man-made mountain. They would fine-tune it into its eventual place.**(1)**

"Shame there aren't nearly enough of them." observed Crowley.

He watched as a more conventional work-detail began its way up the inclined plane of packed sand, which allowed for a hundred or so sweating slaves and serfs to pull the block upwards by means of ropes and wooden rollers. The slow, steady, incline met the pyramid and then wrapped around it in a square spiral, allowing a constant flow of blocks to be manhandled up and around the sides with relative ease. At any one time, up to thirty or forty quarried blocks would be in motion.

They watched as he hovering vimani received the usual _left hand down a bit…. a tadge up on the right there…. just a little more welly on the antigrav… and LOWER! Perfect! _dialogue from the ground.

"The two smaller ones on the left and the right seem OK." Aziraphile commented. "But I'm not sure about the proportions of the big one in the middle. It looks wrong, Crowley. It seems to be going too steep too soon."

Crowley grunted.

"I'm sure they'll find out, Angel. How is it the Hamites are selling this to the people? An exercise in unity and nation-building, wasn't it, to draw together all the different peoples and their different languages under one Pharoah? Bloody good organisation! There must be forty or fifty different tribes working on this speaking forty or fifty different languages!"

"_Come, let's build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world." _Aziraphile murmured, as if he were quoting. **(2)**

"I don't like this, Crowley. If there are Atlanteans here supervising this, it means there are still Nephilim in the world who haven't been accounted for yet."

"Murdered."

"_Accounted for. _I'll have to tell Above _sometime_!"

"But after the Flood, you don't want to. You're wondering what Ineffable disposal method He's going to come up with _this _time. And you don't want to be a part of it."

"You're tempting me again, Crowley!"

"I said. Because. It's my job. That's why!"

An Angel and a Demon went back to drinking in still silence.

Noise from the construction site at Mai-Dun filtered back to them from a long lazy way away. And the three Pyramids still rose.

"How did they get the idea, anyway?" Crowley asked.

"Basic maths." the Angel said, shrugging. "Look, I'll show you. It's all about square numbers, right? Let me illustrate. Square six is thirty-six. Now look. If you have thirty-six rounded pebbles and lay them out in a square, six to a side, they…"

"Roll off the table." Crowley said, helpfully.

Aziraphile shot him an annoyed glance.

"But say they don't. What do you see? You see twenty-five little pits, right, where the pebbles meet. And twenty-five is square five. So you lay anther twenty-five pebbles into the pits formed in the top of the original thirty-six."

"And a lot more pebbles roll off the table."

"You're not helping. Now you go to a third level, right, with sixteen more pebbles. Thirty-six on the bottom, twenty-five above them, sixteen above those, fitting into the dimples left in the five-square. Then nine fit in top of the sixteen. Nine dimples, right? Four on top of the nine. One on top of the four. You then have a stable structure with a low centre of gravity. Do you see it, Crowley?"

"And then you fill the sides in. Smooth them out. Yeah, I see it. I've heard over in the big Western continent, they're building 'em like this, but not bothering to fill in the sides. Sort of step pyramids..

"But how come that big sod in the middle looks a bit top heavy and too steep, then?"

"They're not getting the proportions right _at all_." Aziraphile agreed. "That one's never going to stay up."

Crowley called for more drinks.

And several nights later, the pyramid of Maidun collapsed, with great loss of life among the workers set to build it, who were encamped about its base. Those who translated for them were slain in the Fall, and none could thereafter keep the builders together with common purpose. Its wreckage, that of a great tower built with every intention of reaching the heavens, (if only in a metaphorical sense, owing to the priestly duty of astronomy), may be seen even today in the Egyptian desert, a warning to Man not to blaspheme the Gods by building too high and too impiously. **(3)**

GENESIS 11:5:- But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. 6 "Look!" he said. "The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! 7 Come, let's go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won't be able to understand each other."

_You were right to alert me. Aziraphile._ said the Metatron, in His pillar of electric-blue flame, as he surveyed the Egyptian night skyline. _Some things may not be allowed, although I perceive I need do nothing. The structure is unstable, and will collapse of its own accord. After which they will blame it on divine anger, which is fitting and elegant. With their momentum gone, the foreign workers will disperse and Egypt will wait several hundred years before touching pyramids again. I will return to the Ineffable. My earnest thanks, Aziraphile! This will be recorded in Genesis, you may be sure of it._

GENESIS 11:8:- In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why the city was called Babel,[b] because that is where the Lord confused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world.

Crowley, who had sensed what was on the way and had no desire to meet a Prince of Heaven in his wrath, had chosen to twock a spare Atlantean _vimani _"for safekeeping" . Well, he had reasoned, better that, than destroyed by those vandalising bastards from Heaven. He had spent time checking out pyramid-building civilizations elsewhere in the world – yes, as he'd suspected, Atlantean escapees had made it into Central and South America and were working with the local natives. And Lemurian escapees were similarly advising Babylon, to the East of here, about things called _ziggurats_.

Regretfully accepting that his stolen aircraft was attracting too much attention, not least from Atlantean refugees who knew it to be stolen, Crowley had disabled those on-board systems that allowed it to be tracked, and had found the ideal place to garage it. Reasoning that the local superstitious primitives would run a mile from anything they didn't understand, he had found a natural cave underneath Silbury Hill in Britain to which he could come and go over the coming millennia as he felt like.**(4) **He also had a back-up hangar in another hill called Glastonbury Tor**. **

After scaring the Hell out of the natives by attaching a set of stag's horns to his head and posing as the Great God Herne The Hunter, he had handed out a set of precepts including **The Hill Is Sacred To Me And Thou Mayst Not Set Foot There – **he had taken passage back to the civilized world aboard a Phoenician trading ship with its hold full of tin, copper and silver. He'd gotten used to working as a deckhand with Noah, so he could pass for a sailor easily, and it was worth it for the experience of the deeper oceans.

And now he was tutting over the wreck of a pyramid.

"I knew it would never stay up." he said. "Shoddy workmanship. Pharoah is annoyed?"

"Heads are rolling." Aziraphile assured him. "The last of the Nephilim fled to India, apparently. There's a _maharahabrat _out there, whatever one of those is, and Sanskrit prophecies of a vastly advanced Aryan race who will arrive in India in flying boats powered by pure light. They thought it was time to fulfil them!"

Meanwhile, the headman of an otherwise disregarded tribe, who believed in only one god, shunned pork and shellfish as unclean, and who were developing a whole Deuteronomy of greater and lesser taboos, took stock of the fall of the pyramid.

_This working for Pharoah is all very well, _he thought, _he pays well, houses us well, religious freedom, no worries. But if the bloody things are going to fall down again as fast as we build 'em, this could be no life for us. Besides, weren't we Shemites going to be the masters and that bloody lot the servants? God promised it, didn't he?_

The Hebrew, who was of the Tribe of Levi, sighed. At present they were bonded here by Pharoah's decree. To get out of Egypt, to that fabled land flowing with milk and honey (he'd doubted the literacy of that: in this heat it'd stink of old cheese), would take some planning. He thought of his sons and grandsons.

_Maybe in their time. When young Avram's grown up a bit. Getting across the Red Sea's going to take a bloody miracle on its own, though. _

He sighed, bent his back, and returned to work._ Let's collect some sodding straw to put into these bricks they want. _

* * *

**(1) **Several thousand years later, Crowley would stay in a pleasant and clinically clean Swiss lakeside hotel owned by a dreamer who was fascinated by Ancient Egypt, UFO's, and the pyramids. Over a bottle of schnapps, Crowley would seed Herr von Däniken's _extremely_ open mind with a lot of ideas and possibilities about the ancient world. He got another Demerit for spreading confusion among their best scientific minds.

**(2) **In fact he was: _Genesis 11:4._

**(3) **And today, the failed pyramid of Maidun stands, riding from a vast heap of rubble and wreckage which time has smoothed to a hill, its core stading proud of its shattered sides. Modern technology appears to vave proven that at 57 degrees, the sides were built far too steep, causing instability and an inevitable collapse. It is also noted that a neighbouring pyramid has sides which taper – abruptly – from an initial 57 degrees to a far more stable 50 degrees half-way through, as if this was being built at the same time as Maidun, and the architect learnt urgent lessons from the collapse.

**(4) **Indeed, Silbury would become a magnet for the British UFO-spotting fraternity in years to come, and folklore would record a few millennia's worth of intermittent odd noises and supernatural lights.


	7. The Satanic, or  Crowleyan, Verses

_**Crowley v Crowley, part six**_

_**The Satanic Version**_

_In which your author risks a lifetime banged up under guard with Salman Rushdie. The things you do for Fanfic… still, Rushdie might be a bore, by all accounts, but he does attract classy women. Maybe if I hang around him long enough some'll drop my way.._

_**4**__**th**__** September 476 AD. Rome. **_

Crowley and Aziraphile were strolling together in the gardens of the Roman senator Marcellinus Vallesianus. Late-summer flowers were in full bloom, and it was a clement Mediterranean day. Apart from the smell of smoke and the occasional scream, it was almost idyllic.

"Well, this just wraps it up for fifteen hundred years." Crowley remarked, if only to make conversation. "Do you think Julius would have tried so hard to be Caesar five hundred years ago, if he could see this coming?"

The Angel shrugged, lost in his gloom. Rome had been his base for nearly seven hundred years now. But at least his collection of early Christian religious scrolls was hidden away in safe keeping.

"I mean, " Crowley said, to press his advantage home to a depressed and disillusioned Angel, "Romulus Augustulus packed it in this morning, poor kid. And I don't see anyone queuing up to be Emperor of Rome the way they used to when there was a vacancy at the top. What's the betting he's going to go down in history as the last one?"

"In the West, anyway." said Aziraphile. "Constantinople's still strong."

"For now, anyway. Funny how it all ran so well, before _your_ lot took over."**(1)**

Aziraphile was not going to let that one slip. "Now see _here_, Crowley. You know and I know that pantheistic religion is an outmoded anachronism in the modern world. Religion had to rationalise, get rid of all its surplus minor deities."

"Yeah, and you should have seen the queue to negotiate with Downstairs for a comfortable retirement berth in the First Circle. I didn't see _your_ lot offering retraining or Welfare to unemployed gods and deities!"

"We took our share!" Aziraphile said, hotly. "The ones who saw the Light and humbly requested reassignment under new terms and conditions."

"Yeah. Sacking people and then making them reapply for their old jobs under less advantageous terms and conditions. Then you tell them that being made redundant was their own fault, welfare benefits only sicken the soul, and they should therefore get on their flying chariot and look for work. Good old muscular Christianity, eh, Angel? You got… let me see, Brigid of Ireland. And who else?"

Aziraphile fell silent. The newly minted Saint Brigid had formerly been the rather licentious Celtic Irish goddess of sexual freedom, fertility and generally having a good time. Her more chaste reinvention, after Columbus and Patrick had twisted her arm a bit, was as Patron Saint i/c planting of crops and seeds of all sorts, and agriculture in general.

"_We _gave them a home in the First Circle. Only condition is they consider themselves retired from active politics and don't try, for e.g., to unseat Lucifer."

"But, Crowley, Rome got to a point where monotheism was _inevitable_. The only question was whether it was Mithras or…" the angel mouthed a Name (possibly in deference to Crowley's sensitivities, he was considerate enough not to speak it out loud) and pointed a finger upwards. "Do allow me my moment of triumph for steering Rome in the correct direction. I even got a _commendation _for that!"

"Yeah, so did I!" breathed Crowley, happily. Hell could sometimes see long-term detail better than Heaven. It had looked at what it could see of the later history of the Catholic Church, and given Crowley a demerit in recognition of his part in bringing it about.

"Ah, they're coming." Aziraphile said, to change the conversation. His angelic eyes passed, in mingled compassion and disdain, over the Roman senator and his family who were crowded in the darkened atrium, shivering with cold and fear.

Lower down the path, a group of disgruntled-looking Visigoths, with their vividly yellow-blond facial hair, were climbing the hill. They were brandishing almost empty sacks alongside their fearsome native weaponry, and were grumbling among themselves as to how piss-poor this sodding city was in terms of easily looted gold, gems, cash, et c.

A couple more were walking on behind admiring the civic statuary, and speculating on how they could clean up in the long run, if your cousin Alaric has still got that ship available, nicking all this stuff and selling it on to the Byzantines – you know, a piece of Old Rome in your garden, a snip at ten thousand _tremisii. _While all these other barbarians are focused on what they can easily grab, we clean up on what they're not noticing, what do you say, Malodoric?

The Visigoths found the Senator and his family. Marcellinus Vallesianus lost any pretence to Roman superiority that he might ever have had, and sprawled on his knees screaming _"Don't kill me! Take my wife, take my daughters, anything, but don't kill me!"_

The Visigoths looked at each other and shook their heads. The lead visitor looked over the Senator's distinguished and noble wife, shook his head, and said

"Nice offer mate, but nah thanks, if it's all the same to you. Nothing against the lady, she's kept her looks, I have to say that, but on the whole I prefer it if they act as if they're glad to see me. I mean, you tend to lose the old urge if she's trying to claw your eyes out and screaming in your face, ain't that right, lads?"

"Yeah, Dead right!" agreed the Visigoths.

"Besides, we was in the legion till last Thursday, and there's strict orders about that sort of thing. You can loot and pillage the enemy town, that's allowed, but unless the legate declares "_atrocitas_", right, you leave his women alone."

Marcellinus Vallesianus looked relieved. Then he realised the hard glares he was getting from his wife and daughters. They were not exactly comforting.

The lead Visigoth smiled. "So just hand over yer rings, your cash, your easily portable valuables, right, and we'll be on our way. Put' em in the collection sack as my friend Dubelboric is holding out to you, and we'll be on our way? You gets to keep your house, by the way, as Patrician Odoacer**(2)**, the new boss, don't want too many fires. So jewels, money, give, chop chop."

"Well, it was bad enough after the Huns sacked the city in 410…" the Senator said, trying to bluff on a bad hand.

"So?"

"And then the Vandals, er, _vandalised _the City in 455…"

"You've still had thirty years to recover. Cough up!"

Knowing what was to come next, Crowley and Aziraphile, who'd seen it in Ur and Sumer and Jericho and Jerusalem and Syracuse and Athens and a dozen other places, moved on, exploiting the psychic ether to move unseen.

"Not much of a sack, is it?" grumbled Crowley. "A bunch of… barbarians, yes, but barbarians who until fairly recently have been under Roman Army discipline, going around in small well-ordered respectful gangs with sacks and hopeful looks on their faces."

"There's not much left _to_ sack." Aziraphile replied, reasonably. "The Huns got the best of it in 410. The Vandals got the leftovers in 455. Those poor bloody Visigoths are scraping the barrel."

"So you did a minor grace and put a few things where they'll find 'em?" demanded Crowley. "So they'll leave that poor sap and the women alone afterwards?"

"A few easily overlooked small and portable things that may or may not have been there before, yes." the angel admitted. "Do feel free to lay a curse or a sting in the tail as you will."

Crowley grinned. "After he tried to buy his own freedom by giving them his wife and daughters? They'll all want a quiet word later! Couldn't think of a better Hell, could you, Angel?"

They found War and the others by the Forum. In the main, listless Romans slouched past in the streets and were trying to avoid catching the eye of dispirited Visigoths. Although a mixed group of impoverished lootees and would-be looters had together broken into a wine bar and were sharing its contents, singing some of the old Legion marching songs together.

Red shook her head.

"Fall of a mighty Empire, my bum!" she said, derisively. "I mean, the standard two options are _bang_ or _whimper_, and this isn't even a short sharp squeal… **(3) **for one thing, they all look so **tired**!"

"Well, they've been running the world for six hundred years, so what do you expect at the end? And six hundred years is a pretty good lifespan for an Empire, from birth to death. No wonder they look tired. And they'll all look a lot worse than that at the end of the winter." said Black, reassuringly. "I would also suspect in all the turmoil not many farms have planted anything very much."

"And then I take over." said Pestilence. The white-haired one smiled beatifically.

"So thank you, Red, for bringing this about. It's ours now, I think!" said Black.

"Ah well, there's always the Project, downstairs." she said, philosophically. "Crowley, you have to come and see it! I keep sending you invitations, after all!"

Crowley knew when he was beaten.

"See you down there, Red. " he said. "Hey-ho."

* * *

_**500 AD. The fields of Mars, just outside Pandemonium City, Hell. **_

The two armies clashed in a screaming exultation of weapons and armour. A few half-interested demons, their ultimate keepers, lounged about on the sidelines watching, but in the main the population of Dis had seen it all before and it had lost a lot of its novelty and entertainment value.

Crowley noted that the men had kept a sort of cohesion, even after death. Men had re-organised themselves after death into squads and companies, even regiments, of those who had arrived in the same nationality and approximate time-band. A semblance of their original uniforms had passed over too, and, as they were only human, they had tried to retain the tried and trusted weapons, formations and tactics, even those so hopelessly outmoded and outclassed and which had patently drawn them to death in the first… _last_…. place.

War's innovation, the Legions of the Damned who would fight for Hell in the Armageddon, was taking shape. Not every soldier arrived here: but Hell got its fair share, of those with a penchant for cruelty, rape, atrocity, and all the lesser Hells to which the process of War is prone. Heaven got the good guys, the clean fighters, the military saints**(4)**, and would field its own Legions on the Day.

"I'm proud of these guys, Crowley!" Red said, as he toured the battlefield with her. "They're really getting the hang of it! And it's a good package we offer…"

They paused to let a charging Macedonian phalanx by. Its First Spear saluted Red, courteously.

"They know they've come to Hell. But as skilled professionals, we offer them absolutely no eternal torture, save as a disciplinary thing, or if they _really_ want it, and the chance to fight all day, every day, with a period of untroubled oblivion by night to allow wounds to heal."

"Er…. Speaking of which?" said a corpse near Crowley's feet.

Crowley looked down.

"Ah. Is this your liver I'm standing on?" he said, politely. The damned, a member of the ill-fated Roman expedition that had gone into Germany in 4 AD and had been slaughtered by the Teutonic horde under King Hermann, grinned up at him.

"Just kick it over here would you, sir, so I've got all the bits? Thanks."

"Doesn't that hurt?" Crowley asked, politely.

"Twinges a bit, sir. But it's a time-out from fighting and it all regenerates after a few hours, thank you for asking."

As Queen Boudicca and Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, led a wing of chariots to decimate a group of Sumerian spearmen, Red smiled blissfully.

"I love it here, Crowley. I get a free pass to go Above and look in on their Legion of the Blessed, obviously, but somehow it's not quite the same – compulsory prayers before the training battle starts, and mandatory forgiveness of one's foes afterwards. Hey, Setanta!"

Ireland's great mythological hero, in his chariot festooned with spikes, swords, spearheads and other sharp bladed things, slowed down and acknowledged her.

"Hey, Macha!" he called. Then, to his charioteer:- "Cormac, will you put a brake on this feckin' thing so I can talk to me Goddess? Thank you!"

"How's it hanging?"

"Faith, I have not had so much fun in _years_!" Cuchulain Setanta said to her. He nodded at a nearby demon. "After your bloody sister and that double-bloody fecken' Queen Medhbh got me kilt, do they did, coming down to this place full of Fomorians was a shock, so it was."

"A Fomorian is?" Crowley asked, politely.

"Well, _you're_ one, but at least you have got the common decency to wear a human body!" the Hound of Ulster said. "Not like that bloody ugly Fomorian bastard over there, the one who'd make Balor of the Evil Eye look like the Princess of the May.."

"I'm bloody warning you, Paddy…" said an affronted demon, of the sort who looked like a reassembled explosion in a restricted biolab.

"Oh yeh? You just try it, y' diseased gobshite.."

"Fomorians are, or were, a primitive monstrous race who tried to take Ireland for themselves." Red explained. "The Irish stitched them up a treat. Personally, I think they were Nephilim who'd gone wrong and started interbreeding. They still exist in Scandinavia, Crowley, only they're called trolls and giants up there." Then she went very stern. War could also _prevent _fights breaking out, if she really concentrated, and a fight wasn't desirable at that particular moment in time. "Setanta, don't provoke him. Urgglefloggah, aren't you meant to be on shift soon at the Gate?"

The huge demon lumbered off, muttering about giving weapons to the bloody damned, he didn't know, give the sods ideas…

"So tell your sister I haven't bloody-well forgotten or forgiven, and if you see Medhbh, tell the auld bitch that if I've got anything to do with it, she's going the way of the Seven Sons!"

"She's heaving rocks in the Fourth Circle." Red said, "But I'll tell her you were asking after her. And speaking of the Seven Sons, they're fighting for a warband over on the other side of the field."

With a whoop, the spiked chariot sped off.

Crowley turned to Red.

"_Sister?"_

Red grinned. "The Irish worship, or used to worship, a triple Goddess of War. It's where Christians get their idea for the Holy Trinity, three in one, you know? The Celtic idea of the Triple, Three in One? In Ireland, that was me. He knew me as Morrigan upstairs. Black wig and different makeup, basically."

"So you stitched him up?"

"Mythically, my dear Crowley. Right to the moment where he strapped himself upright to the pillar, so that the saga of the Flame over Cooley**(5)c**ould say truthfully that he died on his feet, and not on his knees. When I turned into a raven and perched on top of the pillar, that was the final courtesy detail, really."

Red laughed. It was not a nice laugh.

"Now let me show you what I've got in mind for the next five hundred years, now Rome's fallen."

She showed him a vision, of a primitive long-hall, where a vast space was enclosed underneath the hull of a long thin ship that had been raised and over-turned. Yellow-haired barbarians were gleefully fighting in and around the vast structure. Periodically, flying horses steered by beautiful almost-angels in battlearmour would fly down, and deposit more warriors.

"Valhalla." she said. "The after-life of the warrior from the far north of the European continent. I've started putting it into their minds that if a good warrior falls in battle, he ends up here, to fight by day and feast and do something else beginning with "f" all night. It's catching on!"

"Only it's built _here_…" mused Crowley.

"Up in the First Circle, yes. The Romans and the Greeks are complaining about the neighbours already, but it can't be helped, and anyway this is Hell."

"But how can they… I mean, fighting and feasting is all very well, but if they're all men, how can they do the third "F"? I mean, not without it coming as a very big surprise to a lot of macho Vikings and Saxons?" Crowley objected.

"I thought about that, Crowley. We train succubuses here, do we not? Call it practical training and a bit of a treat for them, a break from servicing fat flabby politicians and priests." She said, impatiently.

"They get the Afterlife they want, we're respecting the Agreement in that people from non-or pre-Christian civilizations get a light sentence in Hell for their Afterlife, we get to recruit more Legions of the Damned – they're going to think it's for _their_ Day of Judgement, not ours - and everybody's happy! Oh hello, did you want something, General?"

A commanding officer from one of the Damned Legions was cleaning his sword, diffidently. Crowley spotted something familiar about him. A memory from thousands of years ago stirred.

_Oh, shit! It's….._

Crowley took in the unhealthy jet-black armour and chain-mail, heavily ornated with silver. He recognised the power-mad bloodthirsty crazy psychotic eyes of his own son by the Sumerian woman Bellana, now long since in Heaven.

Kro'Li, the Sumerian warlord.

"Father! Against all hope it is you!"

The General dropped to his knees.

Crowley winced. What did you say?

_Hello, son. It's been… ooh… a little over four thousand years now, my, doesn't time fly? _

"Thank you, Father! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! You who made me more than just human! You who made me half-demon! You, who made this damnation into a whole new life!"

"He's right, guv." said a bored guard-demon from somewhere nearby.

"Just humans, see, you can do what you likes to them. But the General's halfway to bein' one of us, in'e? That's earned him privileges!"

_YOUR SON IS MY SON, CROWLEY! _said a voice only Crowley heard. _HALF-HUMAN THOUGH HE IS, HE HAS A VICIOUSNESS AND A CALLOUSNESS AND A NATURE THAT MAKES HIM TRULY DEMONIC. HELL HAS ROOM FOR SUCH AS THIS! I HAVE ADOPTED HIM! _

Crowley did not doubt it. He made the usual embarrassed sort of small-talk with his son for a while, discovering with horror and distaste that the demon-spawned half-human Nephilim who had arrived Below had virtually all been singled out as having potential, and indeed comprised an order of demi-demons all of their own.

"I can see you have a lot to talk about, Crowley!" Red said, with a laugh. "I'll just leave you to catch up with your son and heir. Family business, Crowley! I won't intrude!"

Crowley shuddered, inside, but learnt from Kro'Li that his seed persisted in the world still, and no doubt he would catch up with it every so often to hear what sort of disgusting deeds they were perpetrating in Hell's name.

Crowley did not doubt this. He wondered where he would see his family likeness next.

* * *

_**629 AD. The mountain of Jabal-al-Nur, near Mecca, in the Arabian peninsula. **_

It was sweltering down on the plains near the city. On the way to the Mountain, the Prophet had made one of his very few jokes. Granted it wasn't all that funny by Earthly standards, but it could have come direct from God, which therefore allowed the _humour_ to become transcendent and ineffable, so you had _better_ laugh at it.

Climbing the mountain, it became cooler. A thousand or so feet up they found the cave.

"This is the place" the Prophet had directed. "Set up my writing table and keep prayerful watch."

Inside the mountain, even though the cave wasn't very big and could only accommodate about six people comfortably, it was actually quite cool and clement. The desert traveller Chro-al-ih settled himself into his flowing Tuareg robes to watch and observe as the Prophet seated himself at the writing table, ready for the visitation of his Angel and for the Allah-given ecstacy to fall upon him, in which he would Recite.

Cross-legged and outwardly unreadable, the black-garbed desert traveller tried to recall his operational briefing from Hell.

As Christianity had spread across Europe, the Olympus Protocol had been agreed between Heaven and Hell. In its essentials, the Protocol had accepted that in the absence of divine direction or inspiration from the Two Powers, or in cases where the actions of the Two had cancelled each other out, leaving humans to their own resources, the human race had developed portfolios of Gods and deities of its very own.

Pantheism, in fact, was a default position for humanity.

And like it or not, thousands upon thousands of God-like entities had been called into being by the humans and had attained a remarkable degree of sentience and power (although neither ineffably nor diabolically so.)

It was agreed that Heaven and Hell had a responsibility towards these God-like lesser entities. Therefore both sides were completely free to make presentations and offers to win over the standalone and potentially renegade lesser divinities to call them in as fully-fledged loyal servants of Heaven or Hell. Once chosen the choice on the part of the former divinity was unchangeable; but they had absolute right to chose freely. Heaven or Hell?

As the unwashed, stinking, and hair-shirted fanatics of the Orthodox Church rampaged through Hellenos, throwing down temples, cutting down sacred groves, burning witches and generally establishing Christianity, the old Gods of Olympus had felt their power waning and fading. With little time to lose, they had turned down sainthood (with one or two exceptions) and a honoured place in the Third Circle of Heaven. They elected to merge with their long-passed Roman cousins in that lenient prison for all eternity which is the First Circle of Hell, set aside for virtuous pagans and those who, while living blameless lives, never heard the word of Christ. **(6) **Hordes of lesser immortals also elected to bid a sad farewell to blessed Hellenos and follow their Lords and Ladies into what, if they had the words to describe it, amounted to eternal captivity on an Indian reservation, provided by the _real_ powers in the world. **(7)**

Other pantheons similarly surrendered to the Judeo-Christian viewpoint, seeing the writing on the wall as their human worshippers abandoned them for _{{Look reverently up, raising a reverend finger to indicate where your prayer is going, breathe name}}_ The Celtic gods of Ireland came in after a tense stand-off at Moytura and a last stand at Tara. St Patrick had a tougher time with Cromm-Cruach, the half-dragon half-serpent Lord of the Mound, Lord of Death and Hell, and the only significant renegade to hold out in Ireland. The three-day combat between saint and serpent is today only half-remembered in Ireland, as a folk-memory about the blessed Saint Patrick driving the snakes out, so he did too. In truth there was only ever _one_ snake in Ireland. But holy Jayzuz, 'twas one big difficult fella to shift.

Today, Cromm-Cruach is a contented servant of Satan, whose fiery breath helps stoke the furnaces of the Eighth Circle.

Heaven and Hell had seen this as a necessary tidying-up, as the valency of the world shifted and Imperial Rome crumbled into sand and dust. It got everything back on track and took a lot of added complication out of things, so that once again there was a clean and visible two-cornered combat, Heaven versus Hell in a strictly Judeo-Christian dichotomy. Nice, simple, clean, easily understood, and everyone knew where they were.

But in the early six hundreds, it had become clear to observers of the human condition that something unplanned and unlooked for was happening down there.

And it centred on Arabia.

"There's a random factor somewhere" said the Metatron, as he briefed Aziraphile. "Forget your second-hand scroll business in Constantinople, go and look. Find out."

_THERE'S A RANDOM FACTOR SOMEWHERE, CROWLEY. I DON'T KNOW, JUST WHEN WE'RE SORTING OUT ALL THE LOOSE ENDS AND GETTING THINGS NEAT AND TIDY FOR THE ARMAGEDDON… GO AND FIND OUT, WILL YOU? ALL WE KNOW IS, IT'S IN ARABIA._

Reluctantly, Crowley had gone to Arabia, which if he had his way would be not only Godforsaken but Demonforsaken. He was all in favour of staying clemently warm while he worked, which explained why his visits to Scandinavia had been few and far between. (He had once been suckered by an old shaman called Ilmarinen to partner an apprentice shaman called Lemmenkainen to the dark and desperate and above all _cold _Lake of Tuonela, with its guardian swan-maiden. Talk about a Swan Lake where one buffet from a swan's wing could do a lot more damage than a mere broken arm…)

But you could have too much warm. The Arabian Peninsular, in the early 600's, in summer, could have had denizens of Hell begging them to turn the heating down, it was too high. In fact it did – one specific denizen of Hell was still uncomfortably hot, even in flowing desert-robes. No wonder even the Romans had taken one look, and apart from occasional necessary pacification, had left the place well alone…_ well, they had to take the upper bit so that Europe and Africa remained connected by land. And they spread out down the sides a bit where the weather's cooler, so as to secure the sea passages to India and beyond. But generally, like Alexander before them, they thought of it as an overheated camel's armpit of a country that was of no conceivable value to anybody anywhere and they left it well alone. _

_The Byzantines keep a couple of small garrisons here and extract tribute from the Arabs. I remember they get some sort of petroleum oil from here that occurs in natural black springs. An essential ingredient of their Greek Fire bombs, apparently. But that's all the country's got: sand, some bloody inflammable oil that's otherwise useless to anybody, and blastfurnace heat. _

_So what's brewing under these wide open skies?_

Crowley had tagged onto a caravan, after persuading the Tuaregs not to sacrifice the wanderer in the desert as a gift to a particularly vicious Moon Goddess. The gibbering Arabs had realised a man who can call a _djinn_ at will is the sort of man you keep happy.**(8)**

* * *

They had been persuaded, and had escorted him to Mecca, one of the two great cities of Arabia. Here, talk in the souk had been of a mad prophet who was claiming to channel the word of a God called Allah. The sophisticated and cosmopolitan inhabitants of Mecca had of course driven him out of town, lest his ranting provoked the dread Moon Goddess, the three-part _Gharaniq_ who could drive men to death and insanity and truly demoniac nightmare.**(9)**

Apparently, those hicks and rednecks over in Medina had taken this Prophet in and were tending to believe him, gullible bumpkins, but you know what they're like in Medina, squire. And the worst of it is, he's raising fanatical fighters to attack our bloody caravans and capture their goods, isn't he!

It hadn't taken long before Crowley realised the Prophet _was_ the disturbance. Summoned to the Cave of Hera to witness the growing Holy Book, the life's work of the Prophet, Crowley had been told that this was a high honour. And one that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Crowley had set about locating, earning the trust of, and tagging on with this Prophet, sensing the centre of the disturbance was near him. He had ridden with the Prophet on the raiding expeditions that he assured his followers were necessary to finance the Work. He had been impressed with the way he prevented un-necessary bloodshed, such as the murder or torture of captured enemies or the rape of their women – this was not the cultural norm in the Arabia of those times. Indeed, the Prophet quite often talked his prisoners round into joining his growing band of followers, using what Crowley recognised belatedly was a Nephilim-level of charisma and presence.

Crowley had even been a guest at the Prophet's home, listening to Recitations of the written work so far, noting the genuine warmth and happiness that existed between the Prophet and his wife, who must have been a good twenty years older. Deciding the man was fundamentally more good than evil, Crowley listened, non-committed, to the claim that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him in person and dictated the recitals to which he, Mohammed, was merely the scribe.

"My friend, is it not the case that Allah set the Jews aside as the first people of the Book, chosen to demonstrate His love and justice in the world and to be a shining light to the infidel, that the infidel learn by example and become as they?

"But the Jews failed. And Allah thought. And through the Prophet Jesus and His mother, he made a new covenant, that the Christians be the second people of the Book, whose lives are chosen to demonstrate His love and justice in the world and to be a shining light to the infidel, that the infidel learn by example and become as they?

"But look around you. There is a Patriarch in Constantinople presiding over a church which is a corrupt whitened sepulchre, a mere echo of a corrupt Emperor and Court.. There is a Pope in Rome whose reach is growing wider, but making only slow headway among the infidel and the heathen of Europe. The Christians too have failed Allah.

"Now Allah, the most merciful and the most compassionate, is calling His faithful to become the third and final People of the Book. Through the Angel Gabriel, He is reciting the Book for my poor fingers to transcribe. I have fought it, I have wished for the burden to be taken away from me, but I decided I must be Moslem, I must submit entirely to the will of Allah and allow him to work through me as His last and greatest Prophet!"

The Prophet's eyes settled approvingly on Crowley.

"Lucky for you, my friend, that you are present and alive on this day, to witness the revelation of Allah to his people!"

Crowley reported this diligently back to Hell, along with his suspicion that Heaven was behind this. He almost added that in his experience, Archangels were haughty bone-idle buggers who needed a good kick up the wing-roots before they'd condescend to have anything much to do with the human race - then realised, just in time, that Lucifer was (strictly speaking) still an Archangel Of The Presence who would not be pleased with such candour. He substituted this with _archangels generally have little to do with direct manifestations unto humanity, having earnt by their exalted rank the ability and the right to delegate such action to lesser Angels as directed. _

_Hmmm._ he thought. He read his own diplomatically-chosen words back to himself. "_having earnt by their exalted rank both the ability and the right to delegate such action to lesser Angels as directed." _

A suspicion formed.

"Aziraphile, you devious _bastard_!" he muttered to himself.

If Crowley, on his first visit to the Cave of Wisdom, expected to see his almost-old-friend materialise to dictate a religious book to Mohammed, then he was disappointed. He'd listened to the first few suras, and while he conceded Arabic was a great language for above-average poetry, the lines being recited didn't sound as if Aziraphile had written or even channelled them.

To his ears, it sounded as if Mohammed ibn'Abdullah, merchant and occasional bandit of Mecca, had read both the Jewish scripture and the Christian Holy Bible, and was carefully weaving selected stories together as the basis for a third religious narrative that would take over where the first two had failed. Crowley nodded at the shrewdness of this – from Day One, the Book of the Recitals would have a lineage and an authority derived from far older writings still, ones that were already reverenced by the known world's religious people.

But wherever it was coming from – and Hell had ordered him to make absolutely sure of this point – it certainly wasn't coming from Heaven. He, Crowley, had seen Old Testament prophets at work, fulminating and ranting, beards and eyes ablaze with righteousness, as scribes hurried to get their words on paper. Ezekiel, for instance, eyes swivelling in their sockets after a diet of desert cacti and mushrooms. Or old Jeremiah proclaiming woe and dismay upon Israel, in the slightly triumphant voice of one who _really_ wants to say _I told you so! But you wouldn't listen, would you?_

Crowley had even hidden discreetly at the back, when ordered to report back, as a matter of drop-everything-else prior urgency, on the preaching of a man called Jesus. He'd watched Joshua binYoussef deliver his wisdom in voices ranging from friendly ease, through exasperation, right across to thundering anger. He'd seen divine inspiration at work there, as well as the hand of the Metatron. And a sense of humour, too, that was notoriously lacking in the divine: Jesus had registered his presence at one of his public appearances, and had grinned and winked at him, in an almost accepting sort of way. _Glad to see you attended, Crowley. Keep turning up and you might learn something._

But all he saw here was Mohammed, going strangely still and quiet, saying "it is time again, friends", nominating close associates to ride with him and bear witness, and then the trek up to the Cave. Mohammed would go into what his human witnesses would call an "ecstacy", jerk and thrash a little, and then his head would slump. He would rouse and say "Behold! The most Holy Angel is present! Do you not see him?" , to which his companions would shout joyous assent, looking at the room made in the cave for a seventh.

Crowley would look, expecting to see a slightly consternated Aziraphile, recognising him, Crowley, and knowing he'd been rumbled. . But he saw nothing. Not a glimmer of divine light, nor the robes of a mighty golden Archangel.

_So wherever it's coming from, it's not coming from Heaven, _Crowley thought. _And that state of ecstacy… I'm sorry to be the party-pooper, but that looked damn like frontal-lobe epilepsy to me__**(10)**__. So this is amazing, this is a sublime human achievement, but I'm very sorry, it isn't a divine revelation. But it's incredible that it's coming out of this chap's head, all the same. And does it matter __**where**__ it came from, so long as it's basically accepted by people as a valid religion? _

Crowley also wondered about the sort of mind-set that retreated to a cave in the desert as a place to meditate, have visions, and issue writings and instructions that had the power to change the world. Would this be a recurring default feature of the new world religion?

He shrugged, and rode back to his own house in Mecca.

He caught up with Aziraphile at a cantina in Mecca. They agreed to freely trade all they knew about the new religion and the key players within it. Aziraphile freely admitted it was worrying Heaven and they were keeping an Eye on developments.

"So it isn't your lot." Crowley conceded. "I've seen that beyond all possible doubt. And it isn't my lot either. They're just as puzzled."

"Perhaps the epilepsy is down to us" Aziraphile admitted. "It's one of those things we bless a person with when their natural psychic or spiritual abilities get too near the truth. Like that Irish lad, St Malachi. When his visions got too close for comfort, we steered him to the poteen still and reminded him of First Timothy, Chapter Five, Verse Twenty-Three." **(11)**

"It was good enough for Noah!" Crowley said, remembering.

"How do you think they make this_ arak_, anyway?"

"Well, they _start_ with fermented dates…" Aziraphile said, doubtfully.

"Look, cards on the table time. Ideally, both our sides want this Islam thing stopped. It's just too much of a wild card, when we've almost got it down to a straightforward face-off between Heaven and Hell. We've shut down most of the European pantheon operations, for one thing. The only holdout is the Nordic one, and that'll come in time."

"But it _is _impeccably Judeo-Christian in its origins and source material." Crowley objected. "It honours the Prophets, pays homage to Jesus's Mum, and they even want everyone to eat and drink according to kosher law."

"Halal." the angel corrected him. Crowley shrugged.

"In its essentials, angel, it's another sort of reform Judaism that gives Christianity a respectful nod. You can't find anything here to object to, very much, that Jews and Christians don't already believe in. And it occurs to me that it's too far advanced to suppress, now. And what were the Arabs doing otherwise? Worshipping a psychotic Moon Goddess and ripping human sacrifices to shreds to appease her. You said it yourself that some sort of better religion could only be an advance! So the only other alternative we've got is to…"

Aziraphile nodded.

"Steer it, you mean? Incorporate it into the Ineffable Plan?"

"Well, it's one they've come up with all on their own without any advice or guidance from us in any way. So it's _bound_ to be popular. What if you and I just… _nudge_ it… every now and again…"

"We'll have to take guidance" Aziraphile mused. "But I don't think wither of our sides has thought of doing it your way. Now if I get in there and emphasise the qualities of peace, and wisdom, and pacifism, and submission before God…."

"And I tell them the odd jihad here and there keeps the swords ready for war…"

They reached, simultaneously, for the Arak flask.

Permission to shape and form the new Islamic religion was not long in coming. With little else to do in a desert, Crowley rode alongside the Prophet, discussing political and theological ideas, and generally being Crowley at his most persuasive. Crowley had fought in both the Battle of Medina and the Battle of the Trench, in which non-Muslim Arabs had sought to destroy the dangerous new religion. He had been seen to scatter his foe in all directions**(12)**, and this had led him to the Prophet's inner circle.

Now, after their triumphant conquest of Mecca, he and he mysterious half-Greek Aleksandr had been left alone with the half-written Recitation, the Prophet having lapsed into a longer still silence than usual. Crowley eyed Aleksandr thoughtfully. The Greek was in his middle forties, totally bald, and powerfully built, although running to fat.

He had a disconcertingly feminine sensual mouth, a great eagle's beak of a nose, and two of the deepest-set, most penetrating eyes Crowley had ever seen. Crowley knew he'd seen that face before and undoubtedly would again. He knew he was in the presence of one of his distant grand-sons, their demonic blood coming down the line from Bellana and the warlord Kro'Li.

He was fairly sure Aleksandr had no knowledge of who he was, but decided it would not be wise to explore this. _Leave well alone! _

And he had a mission to fulfil. Hastur and Ligur had delivered it. In their usual charmless style, they had communicated to him that a surefire way to hobble this new Islamic faith would be to ensure a schism or two happened fairly quickly after it began. This had nobbled Christianity, although not fatally, unfortunately. And the Christians had been so bloody profligate with their holy books that it took no time at all to get twenty or thirty competing heresies off the ground, more intent on fighting each other than on spreading the Word. With so may variant Gospels this was a dead cert.

So what you got to do, Crowley, right, is get a few variant Korans up and running. Tamper with the scriptures so that more than one is in existence. Introduce doubt. Get 'em fighting among themselves. Right? Oh, and if you should _fail…_

Crowley was unsure how to do this. The Recitals were kept under firm lock and key when completed. Copies were few, Mohammed being determined to avoid the error of the Christians. He had a few ideas, but this meant getting past Aleksandr. And would his imitation of the Prophet's flowing Arabic script be good enough, so that on wakening, he would look in perplexity at the words, but announce them as his, as who else could have written them?

Aziraphile had failed in a bid to imitate Gabriel: the Prophet, on seeing a _second _Angel in the Cave, one over and above the Angel provided by the inside of his own head, had screamed that Shaitan was trying to invade the process! You are not of Allah, therefore you must be of Shaitan! Begone, foul demon !

Aziraphile had looked disgustedly over to where a real manifestation of Hell was undetectably sitting and grinning at him, said "Well. I say!" in a peeved voice, then winked out.

So it had to be down to him now…

Crowley watched a fly, as it pecked and leapt around the writing table. Surely… Arabic depended on dots and superscripted iotas, did it not. Perhaps I can change the meaning of a line already written…

Crowley crept into the fly's mind, trying not to shudder at the basic "uggh!" of it, and persuaded its tiny insect mind to do as it was told.

_Now just walk through this patch of spilt ink… thank you. Take wing. Hover above the page. Ah. I see it now. Juust land here, with four feet, and this letterscript becomes "Al'Huzat", an aspect of the Moon Goddess…. And two more inky little dots here turns another word into her sister, Al'Lat…_

Through the compound eyes of the fly, Crowley glimpsed the finger and thumb closing. He leapt back to his own body just in time. Aleksandr the half-Greek flicked the crushed fly away and said

"Very clever, oh my many-times great grandsire."

There was a cold, silent, moment of eternity in the cave.

"How did you know?" Crowley asked, eventually.

"It is given to me to recognise demons." he said, shrugging. "And so much easier to recognise the demon who passed his seed into my family thousand upon thousand of years ago. I hail thee, longfather."

Crowley looked into the deep dark eyes of the half-Arab, half-Greek. Kro-li to the life.

Crowley decided to come clean.

"I was tasked with altering the sence of a Recital or two. Just enough that there may be true doubt among the Faithful as to its meaning. And argument. And schism."

Aleksandr Kroulious looked back at his long-time great-grandfather. Then, after an eternity of not speaking, he said

"That is my task also. From the Sekretariat in Constantinople. The Emperor is an effete fool who eats and slurps and whores. The Patriarch is incompetent and complacent. Both do not take this new religion seriously. But it has the fire to sweep the Empire away with the dirt of history. Imagine the Visigoths, who threw down the Western Empire, with a fanatical religion? They would not have stopped at Rome. But our goals are the same. Let me suggest a whole new verse to the current _sura_:"

And Crowley's great to the many times great-grandson took up a pen. And he imitated the hand of the Prophet. And he wrote

_Have ye thought upon __**Al-Lat**__ and __**Al-'Uzzá**__  
and __**Manāt**__, the third, the other?  
These are the exalted __**gharāniq**__**,**__ whose intercession is hoped for._

"Clever" said Crowley. "he's going to wake up, he'll be a little bit confused, but he'll have to admit that as it's in his own writing, he must have put it there. After all, who else would _dare_?"

"A demon sent from Shaitan, aided by a Byzantine spy?" asked Aleksandr, rhetorically. "They will remove it, of course, An invocation to the old Goddess will be spotted as un-Koranic straight away. Besides, it offers hope to the priesthood of the Goddess, that the new religion will allow them to carry on as before. Mohammed will not allow that. No doubt he will cross it out and substitute another line, but this will be the first time ever. It will allow doubt to enter at the truth of the whole."

They shook hands.

"It was good to meet you, longfather. You will be returning to the Place of Darkness soon, with your job complete?"

Crowley shook his head.

"I have to see it out here first." he said. "And report back."

Hr looked down at the unconscious Mohammed. He was a man Crowley could like and respect. Even if he was a lot more good than evil.

* * *

_Mohammed Ibn'Abdoullah (pbuh) died in 632 AD. He had succeeded in uniting the whole of the Arabian peninsula under the new Islamic religion. He survived what later came to be called "The Satanic Verses" without too much trouble. It was generally assumed that in writing an invocation to the Moon Goddess, the Prophet had had a rare off day, and lines more in keeping with the spirit of the whole, condemning women in general and the goddess in particular, were substituted. But people wonder about it to this day…_

_Despite the efforts of Byzantine double agents like Aleksandr Kroulious, Islam then ravaged through the Eastern Empire like the end of the world, taking North Africa and the Middle East for its own and extending far to the East, into Persia and India. The new religion then took hold in Iberia, making sure Spain and Lusitania were ever lost to the Roman Empire. And giving it a European footing that threatened France and England. The French hero Roland rallied his country and set about forcing the Moors back over the Pyrenees. It was also not lost on Western Christians that the Holy Land had been taken by the heathen Saracen…_

_And schism, despite Mohammed's best efforts, happened. Within years of his death, Islam was divided into the Sunni and the Shi'a. For the prophet had not expected to die so quickly and the order of succession had not been sorted out to everyone's satisfaction. _

_And there was also the hidden Islam. The secret, esoteric, teachings of the Sufi and the Ba'Hai. From the Sufi would come the Hashishim, the Order of Assassins…._

_And for various reasons, Aziraphile and Crowley received due recognition of their seeking to steer the course of Islam, be it demerit or commendation. _

_And sometime in the 1980's, Crowley was forced to attend one of those stuffy literary dinners and awards nights where various pompous bores and pretentious luvvies slap each other on the back, use the world "darling" a lot, and get really head-up-arse about literary theory. _

_Crowley relieved the tedium by chatting to a young Anglo-Indian author called Salman Rushdie. What was said has not been disclosed, but subsequent events earned Crowley another Depreciation. _

* * *

_**AND IN THE NEXT BEWILDERING INSTALMENT: **_

_**Taking tea with the Borgias, an everyday Italian family, in their classy Roman pallazio. Aziraphile and Crowley get to see Rome again and have fun with the crazy affable laugh-a-minute Italian man of honour and discretion who is currently Pope. Coming soon, always assuming I haven't been fatwa'd. **_

* * *

**(1) **The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire remains a historical battlefield and controversy. In 1986, an eminent historian catalogued 210 different theories advanced to explain how once-mighty Rome fell. This now included one event that had been hitherto overlooked by the historical profession, as previously every commentator from Gibbon onwards had taken it as axiomatic that the advent and supremacy of a palpably superior and correct religion (ie, ours) had been a Good Thing, full stop. The societal changes and disruption and resentment caused by Rome's adoption of Christianity and rejection of its old gods played a major part in the Empire's collapse. Indirectly, Aziraphile brought about the Decline and Fall of Rome.

**(2) **Odoacer, the Visigoth general who rebelled from Roman Army service and overthrew the last Western emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476AD, took over a more-or-less fully functioning Rome and installed himself and his heirs as its ruling _**Patricians….**_

**(3) **_This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper…_ poet T.S. Eliot, _**The Hollow Men. **_

**(4) **Although the careers of St Ignatius Loyola or St Francis Xavier might not bear witness if examined closely… the great fighting warrior saints of the Counter Reformation were both mercenary _condottieri _before hearing the Call and had at least condoned plundering, rape, cruelty, yet c, among their men. Then again, the same might be said for those Crusader leaders who, inconveniently for Heaven, had been given a free pass to Paradise by assorted Popes despite their greed and ruthlessness. King William of Orange got into heaven too – he won the Calvinist lottery of predispensation – and Oliver Cromwell made it, despite what he did in Ireland. Belisarius, Vespasian and other great and generally restrained Roman generals, alas, went to Hell because they had opted for paganism. Things can get a bit blurry in the afterlife.

**(5) **The_**Taìn Bo Cuilhagne**_**, **the part of the Irish mythos dealing with a long-ago war where Ulster set itself apart from the rest of the Kingdoms of Ireland and much bloodshed and sorrow followed on. Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it…

**(6) **Urglefloggah, the Gatekeeper of Hell, contemptuously dismisses the First Circle as "_a bleedin' holiday camp… talk about bein' soft on the buggers_…_ bleedin' soft option, innit!"_

**(7) **Although many others chose to renounce their old Gods and remain in the world, following a different sort of _**Lords and Ladies**_. One day, Crowley and Aziraphile would be tasked with faerie-hunting, just to tidy things up a little.

**(8) **The _djinn,_ or _genie_, is the terrible spirit of the deep desert. After researching the habits of the natives with regard, for eg, to skinning hapless prisoners alive in homage to the moon Goddess, Crowley had asked for an assistant demon, (one of inhuman aspect), to assist in terrorising the natives. They had rehearsed a routine where Crowley, threatened with his life, summoned up his terrible _djinn_, allowed it to loom and threaten for a while, then, at Crowley's command could be banished to a…. small portable thing…. Crowley had compromised with an oil-lamp. Size is optional for demons.

**(9) **She sounds oddly like the Celtic_**Morrigan**_, who also came as three-in –one, and whose alternates**, **_**Macha**_** and **_**Badhbh**_**, **were goddesses of fear and nightmare and insanity . The _**Gharaniq**_was apparently dominant Goddess in Arabia prior to Islam and she also had three faces** – **_**Al'Lat, Al'Huzar**_and_**Manat. **__Gharaniq_ is an Arabic word meaning a group of birds – it has variable associations to cranes, eagles, _**and to crows and ravens**_** – **the tutelary birds of the** Morrigan. **

**(10) **This has seriously been advanced as a reason for Mohammed's visions and the voices in his head that later cohered as a major – and internally consistent – work of religious writing.

**(11**) _I Tim. 5:23:- Drink not only water, but take also a little wine for thy stomach's sake. _Crowley would observe that technically, this makes the entire Methodist Church heretical.

**(12) **Crowley had not really needed a sword. He had just employed his intrinsic demonic nature to render the enemy's horses and camels terrified and unrideable. Any human coming near him with a sword had received a grin and the full force of his unshielded demonian eyes. This had earnt him a reputation as a determined fighter in the cause of Islam.


	8. Keeping it in the Family

_**Crowley v Crowley, part seven**_

_**An offer you can't refuse: the original Godfather. **_

_**1502 AD. The Sistine Chapel, . Rome. **_

Alexander turned his wide, fleshy, face upwards to the ceiling. His full Spanish lips pursed. It would take a lot to cause that mouth to purse to the point where the lips were invisible. But he was managing it, under the extreme pressure and provocation of the day.

"So what do you think, Doge?" the painter said, hopefully, as he finished cleaning his brushes.

"It's a bit… _bare_, isn't it?" Alexander commented, staring unbelievingly upwards.

"Well, that's what you asked for, monsignor? Replastering and making good, full paint job on the ceiling, undercoat plus two coats of white emulsion, that's what it said on the manifest, look!"

Alexander pulled his eyes away from the bare white expanse.

"I asked for a fresco!" he hissed. The painter shrugged.

"And that's what you _got,_ Duce! Says here, look, plastering. Fresco. Same difference."

"I asked for painting! To me that's scenes from the Holy Bible, the Creation, the lives of the prophets, the mission of Christ, maybe skew things so that Christ looks a little bit like my son Cesare, and God looks like me with a beard…"

"Oh, I see!" the painter said, suddenly realising. "_That _sort of painting. Vanity publishing."

"Maybe in this big central panel here, the Lord God of All Creation passes the mystic flame of life from his fingertips to the fingertips of Adam, the first-created. A visual metaphor for Man's striving to reach God and God striving not to forsake Man… you're not getting any of this, are you?"

"No, guv'nor" said the painter. "To be honest, I only do interior decoration. Maybe the odd bit of plastering and paper-hanging, and I help out with scaffolding at busy times…"

Alexander's eyes narrowed.

"You _are_ Michael Angelo, painter and visionary?"

The painter laughed.

"Stone me, _cappo,_ no! you're thinking of my cousin, Mike Angelo. He does all the fancy stuff! The number of times people have mixed us up, and cousin Mike's gone off orn a job and given the customer one of his masterpieces, a Last Supper or something, and they've turned round and said "_that's all very well, signor Angelo, but I only wanted the walls to have a basic emulsion, you know, in off-white or eggshell!_ You wouldn't believe it, squire!"

Alexander took a deep breath.

"What does this red cap suggest to you? That, and the golden tiara on the throne over there?"

The painter shrugged. "Never really bothered with all that sort of thing, vicar. But you're a priest of some sort, right, guv?"

"I'm the fucking _Pope!" _Alexander Borgia hissed. "you address me as Your Holiness! Not _squire_ or _Doge_ or Duce. _Duce_! You make me sound like a sodding lightning conductor!"

"Ok, Holiness. Keep your hair on…. Er… little matter of the bill here? Took a lot of emulsion, did that ceiling?"

He held out a scroll, diffidently.

Alexander Borgia unrolled the bill and scrutinised it. He thought for a second, and called "Lucrezia!"

There was a rattling and squeaking, and an ornate, jewelled and somewhat over-ornamented tea trolley rounded a corner, pushed by a pretty enough girl, but who had slightly manic eyes.

"Yes, Daddy?" she trilled.

"Daddy?" the painter queried.

"Don't call me "daddy" in public!" Borgia hissed through clenched teeth.

"Sorry, Papa, I forgot."

Ah, I _see_!" the painter breathed in sudden comprehension. "That's "Daddy"! as in "Papa", Father of the Church! A symbolic thing, right? Be a rum do if she were to be your actual daughter, eh, Capo?"

The painter nudged the pope in the ribs.

With icy patience, Alexander Borgia turned to Lucrezia.

"Lucci, my dear. Please provide for our artisan friend one of your _special_ cups of tea? Thank you so much!"

"Don't mind if I do, luv. Three sugars?" He then added, with perfect precision,

"I'm _dying_ for a cuppa!"

Alexander Borgia grinned and walked away. His secretary met him in a cloister.

"Cardinal Corolei to see you, sir."

"Ah! Antonius. Send him in, please!"

Borgia liked having Corolei nearby. Ordaining him as a Prince of the Church had appealed to his sense of humour: people divined some sort of private joke existed between the two. Had they known the _real _reasons for Borgia's amusement, they would have shocked them.

The red-clad young Cardinal was lounging against a wall, radiating a louche and sinister form of cool, his eyes shaded underneath a broad-brimmed red hat of office. He straightened up slightly as the Pope approached.

"Alex!" he said, nodding.

"Tony, my friend!" the Pope said, holding his arms wide.

Cardinal Corolei submitted to be kissed on both cheeks in the Latin style. It was how things were done round here, after all.

"And how is the Prince of this World on this fine morning?"

The Cardinal winced. While it was true that a fully paid-up Cardinal counted as a Prince in the Catholic hierarchy, he belonged to another structure still, one where only one Person, at the very top, rightly held the title Lord of This World and Prince of Darkness. In that world, where everybody was properly jealous of their relative status, Antonius Corelei was barely a town councillor. Borgia knew that well enough, and it was his little joke.

"Doing well, thank you, Alex. " he said, vaguely.

In the background, they heard a soft grunt and the sort of thud that might be caused by a body falling to the ground.

"So difficult to get good artisans these days." Borgia said, dismissively. They heard Lucrezia summon a couple of papal guardsmen to take the body away. Their footsteps and a dragging noise died away into the distance.

"So what do you think of the Chapel?"

Crowley looked up.

"Stark. Plain. _Minimalist._ " he said, with approval. The Pope grunted.

"Not exactly what I wanted. Not by any means."

"It could be the coming thing, though." Crowley pressed on. "Sooner or later everyone's going to get tired of baroque and showy. You could be first with the new trend!"

The Pope glared at his confidante.

"Or maybe you could get a painter in to add a bit of decoration" Crowley said, hurriedly. "After all, you've set up a blank canvas for them to work with!"

Alexander Borgia smiled. This time he'd take better care _not_ to hire somebody whose invoices were headed with

_Mick Angelo. Painter and Decorator._

"I may even have _your _likeness put up there. Something for them to wonder about in coming generations!" The Pope clapped Crowley on the shoulder.**(1)**

"You're too kind." Crowley said. Part of his mind was thinking, _Why do I get into these situations?_ _Is the bloody Ineffable working through me, after all? _

He thought back several years, to his first meetings with Rodrigo Borgia, as he had been then. Below had sent Crowley to Rome, with the intention of getting one of our men to the top as Pope in order to bang a few more nails in the coffin of Christianity. Crowley had realised at once that it was only a matter of time – the Church was flyblown and corrupt, and careful deduction harnessed to a couple of discreet break-ins had revealed to him that most of the prime candidates had already been signed up to the Immortal Soul deal. It was just a case of being seen to be active and getting around the various contenders, and perhaps doing a bit of salesmanship to get this Rodrigo Borgia fellow to sign the standard contract, the one that said the world will be yours for twenty-four years so long as you sign over your very soul to us.

To this end, sometime around 1490, he had used his old friend Leonardo da Vinci to get him an invite to the Borgia family home for dinner. Leonard was a Borgia employee: he had been a field engineer to the notoriously insane son Cesare, who for all his multiple sins and character defects was a born general and Army commander. Even so, he, Crowley, had been slow to see the real truth of the situation, not until Rodrigo had pointed it out to him at a private drinking session after dinner one night.

"I've been waiting for you." Rodrigo had said, without preamble, as they had been discussing what the rumoured Western continent meant to Europe. Apparently an Italian called Amerigo Vespucia had seen it first, although there was a Welsh contender called A'Merrick. Either way, a corruption of the name, _Amerika,_ was spreading in common usage. Queen Isabella of newly-freed Spain proposed to settle the matter in the next few years, by sending out an obsessed pest of a navigator called Columbo to definitively find out, or preferably die trying.

Crowley, who already knew how big the Americas were – he'd been there – had been non-commital. He thought it was going to be bad news for the natives, however advanced they were.

And now this…

Rodrigo looked down his big hooked hawk nose, his eyes, penetrating and cold as always, boring uncomfortably into Crowley's.

"My family has a long folk-memory." he said, conversationally. "Untold generations ago, near the Creation of the world, a demon from Hell arose and sired a child on a long-ago mother of my line. Both she and the original half-demon child are long gone now. But family lore has it that the demon-blood runs true and occasionally arises in family members. I have it, certainly. Would you not say my son also has it, far more strongly than I do?"

Crowley thought about Cesare's excesses and bloodlust. A vision of his Nephilim son, the war-lord Kro-Li, rose. He shuddered. Then the true significance of the words hit home.

"It is also rumoured that demon has returned from time to time to acknowledge and advise the family he founded. I have been waiting for him."

Crowley was suddenly horrified. _Not again… _

Borgia smiled, the smile enveloping his fleshy voluptuous face.

"I thought so. I see it in your face. I especially see it in your eyes. _Serpent eyes. _You are more than human, Anthony. Would you care to tell me more?"

Recognising a descendant – _another_ descendant – Crowley told all. Rodrigo laughed.

Rodrigo smiled. "I'm not sure what the courtesy is to one who is many, many, many, times my great-grandfather. But you are, to me, part of the Borgia family and I shall treat you as one such!"

Crowley did not feel reassured or comforted by this. He had _seen_ the Borgia family values at work. Some family. Some values.**(2)**

"Apart from the eyes. How did you know?"

Rodrigo Borgia shrugged.

"I had Lucrezia test you with a couple of her _special _wines. Apart from remarking that one tasted corked and bitter, you showed no ill-effects and continue living. Had my supposition been incorrect and you had proven merely human, you would not be here having this discussion with me!"

And he burst out laughing.

"And if I sign this contract with Hell, I get to be Pope? The paradox amuses me! Pass me the contract!"

Crowley received a demerit for this, and a full Denunciation when a year or so later, Rodrigo Borgia became Pope Alexander VI. In return, to suit some obscure private joke, he made Crowley a Cardinal.

Idly, he wondered where Aziraphile was. Surely the Angel should have been right in there and Thwarting for all he was worth? _Still, it gives me a free hand to collapse the Church from the top down if he isn't here. I last saw him in Germany hanging around that printer's shop learning all about the wonderful world of books. Should keep him usefully diverted for a century or three. _

But he too appreciated the joke that made him one of a select group within the Church, standing one level below the Pope in terms of power and prestige. He'd had misgivings at first.

"Look." He had said. " I appreciate the gesture, Alex, but look at this logically. I can't go into churches or cathedrals or synagogues. Mosques, no bother. Ashrams, not a wince. Places sacred to the Moon Goddess, without a care in the world. But demons and churches. Don't mix. _And_ places that nail a horseshoe over the door, for some reason. Isn't it going to look odd if a Cardinal can't force himself through the cathedral door without doubling over and throwing up his breakfast? It's also bloody undignified!"

Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, smiled tolerantly.

"I have always thought that Sunday is such an inconvenient day to be up early." he said. "It follows on too closely to Saturday night, for one thing. Believe me, my friend, you will not stand out. Just about every Cardinal in the church spends Sunday morning throwing up and staggering around with a headache! Especially if they've been to a Vatican party, one of my _special_ parties, the night before!"

Crowley did not doubt it. He'd been put off horse-chestnuts for _life _after seeing what had been done with them at a Borgia party**(3)**.

But he'd been persuaded, especially after Borgia said, mildly, that he thought the thing about demons and churches only applied to _true_ places of worship remaining unsullied and sacred to the One God.

Crowley had tentatively tried it out. He had discovered, to his surprise, the revulsion field that normally prevented a demon from entering a church was so weak in Rome that he could walk into almost any religious premises he liked, and the most he got was mild nausea. OK, he still got serious nausea in the Dominican places – they ran the Inquisition – but that was for different reasons entirely.

He noted that a very small mission house still radiated the old pure demon-exclusion zone, so strong a field that he had to use a different street to avoid it. _He'd have to find out about these Franciscan Brothers, whoever they were. _

He shrugged. The Angel would know. He'd bloody well _boast _about it. It could wait.

And so he was ordained, passing through Neophyte, Deacon and Priest, through Monsignore, Bishop and Archbishop, with dizzying speed on his way to Cardinal, to honour the hierarchy. This was a little detail Hell especially depreciated later.

Crowley wondered how he'd respond to communion wafers, sacred wine, and – he shuddered - Holy Water. There had been a tricky moment during the service where the Pope, as officiating priest, had sprinkled Holy Water over the candidates. Crowley still shuddered at the horror of the moment, expecting at the least, grade three burns. But it had only been water… ordinary Roman water drawn from the foul Tiber, where all anyone sprinkled with it had to fear was cholera or the plague. _Of course. If Borgia "blessed" it, it would be as ineffectual to a demon as the exclusion field around a Church. Does nobody seriously Believe any more? _

And now he was a Cardinal and confidante of the arch-sceptical and cynical Borgia Pope, a man whose infamous physical appetites were legend, who ruled over a corrupt Church and a criminally insane Family, yet a man who cared enough for art and lasting works to commission what would be enduring monuments to his legacy as Pope.

Crowley held the thought that if you combined the typical close-knit Italian family with high-end criminality, you would end up with a lethal crime machine that profited from wholesale human venality and misery, and which would, because of its nature, prove virtually impossible for all save the most ruthless law-enforcers to wipe out. _Omerta _was the word. And in a country suffering frequent incursions from its superpower northern neighbour, what was the slogan… oh yes. _Morte Alla Francisci In Aetalia. _Death to all Frenchmen in Italy. You could _do _something with a snappier version of that slogan…**(4)**

But here he was, Cardinal Antonius Corolei, advising a Pope and dropping hints from Hell in his ears. Life for a demon got no more satisfying than this… and in his more reflective, mellow, moments, Pope Alexander was actually quite an interesting bloke to talk to.

"I have often wondered about the veracity of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls." Borgia had mused one night, as they got well down a flagon of finest Calabrian white.

"To me, it makes as much sense as the notion that we have only one life, the merest flicker in the face of Eternity, and we are then irrevocably judged on the basis of how we spend those few years. Think about it, Anthony. We are judged, outside time, for all eternity, on the basis of virtues applied and sins committed within time? Is that remotely fair or just? I hear that in the Indias, there is a philosophy based on the eternal return of souls to this world, that we learn and grow over a succession of lifetimes. An impartial force teaches us that we reap what we sow – is that not in the Bible? – and this impersonal force teaches us, and shows us, that there is no option _other_ than to be as Christ-like as we can be. We learn for ourselves and we grow by ourselves. This posits no god but Man! It makes the notion of God and Satan irrelevant!"

"Ye—es" Crowley had agreed. "But there's one little flaw in that reasoning. I'm sitting here. I know Hell's real and Our Father Below is real. I know an Angel who'd give you a pretty definite "yes" if you asked him if God's for real. You can't wish us away, Alex!"

Borgia grinned.

"Point taken, my friend. But _humanity_ can make you irrelevant! We can say to Heaven and Hell both – _non serviam_!"

This was dangerous talk. It made highly placed people in the Heirarchy panic. Any sign that humans were not following the script was always a worry. And he, Crowley, had always suspected the bloody Buddhists were a bit too serene for their own good, bunch of dispassionate detached bastards. But hold on, Buddhism had its Devil too, right, Maya, the Lord of Illusion? (He wondered exactly which member of the Hierarchy had manifested to Siddhartha as he sat under the fig tree, blessed out and meditating. It certainly hadn't been him. He'd have gone about it differently, for one thing.)

"Who is purely that, Anthony. _Illusion._ Look, I can see this makes you nervous. What if I were to say I suspect my essence has been on this world before, in other bodies, and will return again?"

Crowley did not doubt this. He had once spoken to Death, in a quiet moment, who had admitted that some of them were too clever by half and had found a revolving door in the works that allowed them to bypass Heaven and Hell and come back again. And again. And again. This also worried the Hierarchies.

" There was a warlord called… Kro-li, in long-gone Babylon."

"Sumer" Crowley found himself correcting. He felt an icy tingle in his spine_. How did he know that? _

" I believe I was once a priest, or a scribe, in a civilization long gone underneath the Western sea. My name then was Eiwass, and I died in the great flood in the days of Noah. Then I was in mighty Egypt, a scribe called Amon-Rhap-The. The next life that I see in visions is that of a Byzantine called Alexander, who sought and failed to warn Byzantium of the Saracen menace. I took my name as Pope in honour of that lost soul. I have every faith that I will escape the judgement of God and return again when this life is done."

Crowley remembered the Greek, the Byzantine agent, in the Arabian cave who had helped him create the Satanic Verses of the Koran. _Coincidence? Or some sort of racial memory thing, of previous members of his family line? This man is a descendent of mine, and Nephilim. Strange things happen to Nephilim. Strange things happened __**around**__ Nephilim. Could it be that the physical bodies preserve the Nephilim streak, and the same soul is reborn? What do I tell Hell about this conversation, if anything?_**(5)**

Crowley reserved judgement, and did not tell Hell. In 1503, Borgia died. Crowley stuck around for the funeral, thinking _If you were right, you crafty old bastard, I'll see you again!_, then realised that Rome, with the Borgia family losing control, was not a healthy place for a Borgia-created cardinal to be. his church career not having been all that onerous anyway, he gratefully left town, losing the Cardinal Corolei disguise.

In Northern Italy, he ran into Aziraphile for the first time in years. He had been watching events unfold from a sleepy backwater town called Asissi.

"So where were _you_ while I was wrecking the Church?" he demanded. The Angel smiled, blissfully.

"Restoring it, dear boy. Restoring it. Look, it's quite simple. The corruption in Rome had got too far and too deep for me to save. I left the whole cess-pit to you and focused on the real heart of the Church, where it's still vital and good. Observe!"

Aziraphile stretched out a hand.

A man in a brown monk's robe stood there, surrounded by a flock of birds and woodland animals who loved him and wanted to be near him. The fact the shoulders were white with bird droppings did not seem to worry him at all. And he radiated…

Crowley retched, doubled over and threw up.

"He's a sodding bloody SAINT!" he accused.

Aziraphile passed Crowley a handkerchief.

"About time we had a real one, don't you think? Look, when an ulcer or a boil bursts, all the filth is cleaned out. New and healthy tissue replaces it from underneath. The Borgias were the filth and Rome was the ulcer. St Francis here is the healthy growth I've been promoting."

_St Francis. Franciscan. No sodding wonder. _

"And you wouldn't believe what else we've got lined up now Rome's quite clearly run its course! This isn't the end for Christianity, Crowley. It's a new beginning. I guarantee you _every_ church door will be closed to you again in thirty or forty years' time. Business as usual!"

Crowley did not doubt it.

"Got a drink?" he asked.

The Angel smiled, as one who knows he has won this round is apt to smile.

"I know a good tavern. Coming?"

* * *

**(1) OK, **so the Sistine Chapel ceiling was commissioned not by Alexander VI but his successor Julian II. Forgive me this lapse. Crowley did, however, advise on the Temptation in the Garden frescos and made sure he was included, as quite a handsome looking Serpent. The Temptation is two panels along from the bit of the ceiling everybody knows.

**(2) **Rodrigo Borgia's acts of incest with his daughter Lucrezia are historical fact and have been commented on, in a morally disapproving way, to emphasise his moral degeneracy and animal appetites. The strange and intense Lucrezia, Daddy's Girl to the end, happily submitted, it has to be said. The _real _reason was that Rodrigo knew all about the Nephilim strain in the family, and he had to force himself to go against instinct and conditioning. He wanted a child whose Nephilim nature would be intensified and strengthened by selective, careful, inbreeding, so that the strain remained potent in the world. As we shall see in a later chapter, he succeeded.

**(3) **The so-called _Ballet of the Chestnuts_, a Borgia party game that involved naked courtesans pretending to be pigs and snuffling for chestnuts, often concealed in some _very_ strange places.

**(4) **The later history of the Mafia bore this out. Originally an underground movement to resist French occupation, it mutated into something resembling the old patchwork of city-states and _condotierri_ warlords as Italy slowly grew and unified. With a united Italy, it grew into a network of competing criminal families, which spread to the United States along with Italian emigrants. The only Italian government that ever succeeded in uprooting the Mafia was that of Benito Mussolini, who decided that Italy only had room for one Godfather – him. Displaced Mafiosi fled to America, creating a headache for law enforcers in the 1920's and 1930's. With the allied invasion of Italy in 1943, against all urgent British advice, the USA gave amnesties to Mafia leaders in its prisons provided they returned to Italy to , er, "_assist_" the military government there. While this prevented Mussolini loyalists from leading insurgencies in the Anglo-American rear, it re-established the Mafia with a vengeance, the Americans taking care to exile an endemic social problem back to its country of origin… Crowley, who in a wartime visit to the USA had dropped a few ideas into the ears of State Department officials, got another Demerit for this.

**(5) POSSIBLE SPOILER: **the Symonds biography of Aleistar Crowley is not a conventional one. It opens with a chapter describing the lives of the previous incarnations Aleistar Crowley claimed to have had. These include Pope Alexander Borgia. While the biographer could have been described as being really meticulous and just making sure to include everything, the odd and undeniable point is that pictures of Alexander Borgia and Aleistar Crowley betray a really odd physical similarity… and there! We get back to Aleistar Crowley again. There is a plan to this meandering fanfic. Patience!


	9. An interlude in North America

_**Crowley v Crowley, part eight**_

_In which our heroes impede post-Civil War reconstruction and are called back to Europe to help romantically-minded humans who are in full reaction against a world governed by Science. _

_Now with soundtrack album! _

_Redbone – **TheWitch-QueenofNewOrleans**_

_Santana – **JingoLo-Ba**_

_Joan Baez **TheNightTheyDroveOldDixieDow n**_

_Lynnryd Skynnard**-SweetHomeAlabama**_

_**Broad Street, Charleston, Virginia. January, 1867. **_

Crowley and Aziraphile picked a cautious path along the narrow cleared strip that passed for the city's main street. It was barely wide enough for a single cart pulled by two draught horses, although the original plan for the city had been a wide spacious boulevard. Indeed, in finer times there had been a continual procession of fine surreys and landaus, their gleaming coachwork set off by finely groomed horses and impeccably dressed black coachmen and flunkeys, the glory of the Old South and the antebellum lifestyle where a minority of extremely rich white gentry were sustained at the top of a social hierarchy, ultimately rooted in the labour of a large population of _non-citizens_.

But those times were now a memory. The street was piles of rubble, testimony to war, bombardment and fire. Stumps of once fine buildings and colonial houses rose above the rubble to no more than ground-floor height, and the few horses that could be seen were fatigued and ill-fed jades. Weeds grew among the stones; a magnolia bush still flourished, testimony of better days.

The angel and the demon walked along, the frontage of what had once been an imposing civic building to their left, its windows now empty black sockets, its fine stonework mocked by the fact that there was nothing above perhaps the height of its ground-floor ceilings.

A fitful fire burnt behind the shelter offered by a partly fallen stone wall. Some muted conversation fell silent as the pair approached.

Aziraphile fastidiously flicked a bit of ash off his fine suit. Crowley, in the dress uniform of a Union Army colonel, shrugged. He flicked an arm towards the twenty or thirty huddled blacks who had found shelter in the ruins, who appeared terrified at the sight of the two well-dressed white men approaching them.

"That's what your side fought for." he said, his gesture taking in both the ruins and the freed slaves. "Do you think it was worth it?"

The ragged and sorry blacks looked up at them with real fear. Crowley belatedly remembered an earlier encounter with black slaves, when he'd first visited this benighted country, down in Louisiana, in 1859. Maybe it was the privation of slave life, maybe it was the African religion and outlook they'd brought with them, maybe it could be some deeper spirituality at work, but they'd _known_. They'd bloody well rumbled him as being other than human.

Crowley was not used to having his cover blown. It had seriously un-nerved him that when his host had proudly shown him the slave quarters, so as to demonstrate that his human livestock was adequately housed, decently dressed and adequately fed, the slaves had gone into eye-rolling fear and trembling at his approach, moaning that the devil walked among them. Well, they'd used terms like _PapaLeba, LiGrandZombi, _and _Legba_ about him, words uttered with shuddering moaning fear.

His host, Jean-Marie Lestadt, had in the end had to resort to sending in his overseers with whips to restore order. He had apologised to Crowley, saying that the blacks get crazy and superstitious now and again, and a collective madness descends. Why, they are the descendents of those who were slaves in my grandfather's time, at the end of the last century, when strange things happened here. There had been a slave rebellion, Lestadt had explained, when my great-great uncle Louis was the Master here. Blacks had been disappearing, perhaps taken by alligators or other predators, and the slaves took it into their heads that Louis Lestadt had been a demon and a devil. They rose up and burnt the House and poor Louis disappeared, presumed dead.**(1)**

Crowley had learnt later, when he met Marie Leveau**(2)** in New Orleans, that _Papa Loba__**(3)**__,Li Grand Zombi,_and _Legba _are all names for the Great Serpent in voodoo religion. Well, it only went to show…

And now, a party of painfully thin, ragged, blacks were rolling their eyes at him until the pupils disappeared, and the moan of _"Legba! Papa Loba walks!"_was rising.

Aziraphile tutted. As one, perhaps more perceptive than the rest, cried _"GrosBonAnge! Help us!",_he jumped, then took advantage of the fear Crowley had precipitated to call several loaves of bread into existence. Crowley glared at him.

"A small grace, yes?" the angel said. "Those poor people are half-starved!"

They walked on as the scramble for the food broke out behind them.

"This is exactly what I mean, Angel!" he said, emphatically. "Even two years ago, they would never have starved, right? They had somebody to at least feed and house and clothe them. That was _law_ around here – you owned slaves, you looked after them! Now they're free, they're free to starve and get kicked around like dogs, they're nobody's responsibility any more! You people just haven't thought this _through_, have you?"

"At least they're not being whipped or worked to death any more" the angel said.

Crowley shrugged. This was getting to be an ongoing Moebius debate between them.

"You've got to bear in mind, Angel, that slave-owners were also rational businessmen. You don't get anywhere if you neglect the essential tools in your business and make the best use of them that you can. If you pay between eighty and five hundred dollars for a slave, then that's a capital investment, right? The moment it sickens or dies, that's your investment wasted. So you feed them, you house them, you have some sort of medical advice on call – last thing you want is a contagious disease breaking out and wiping out your stock. A lot of the stories circulating up North are just exaggerations, Angel, just propaganda to support the war effort. I mean, you talk to any of the plantation families, they'll tell you that their slaves function best if they're happy. Well, reasonably content. So you don't break their families up and sell their children on. Well, not before the kids are adults, at least. And the overseers just generally sort of crack their whips in the air, as a warning. Although now and then…"

"Oh, so they were really benevolent employers with the welfare of their workers at heart in everything they did?"

"It doesn't become you to be cynical, Angel. But the issue is that you've got nearly a million people abandoned and starving who weren't starving before the South collapsed and the North very kindly freed them. But then, you can't have a welfare state, can you? Saps the ability of people to use their own resources and go out and find work to enable them to get their self-respect back and feed their families."**(4)**

Aziraphile shook his head.

"So what's happening here, anyway? The North won the civil war. Virginia and Georgia were ravaged by the invading army. Destroyed, in fact. It was only after the War that Congress woke up to the fact their armies might have been a touch _over-enthusiastic_in the drive South. So they authorised _Reconstruction_. But we're nearly two years on and nothing much seems to have been reconstructed."

"Can you be surprised? Human nature, Angel. Pour millions of dollars into a hole in the ground with nobody held accountable for it and nobody watching to see where it goes. There are a few people doing well out of Reconstruction, certainly. But they're not around here as we speak."**(5)**

Crowley grinned. He had been nudging grift and corruption along in the chaos that had survived the fall of the South. At least five different factions had arisen, each with its own different agenda and a contending perspective on how to Rebuild after the War Between The States. Not very much to his surprise, Crowley had discovered that he really didn't have very much to do. Human beings are infinitely adaptable and gravitate naturally to the Seven Big Ones, in this case Greed and Avarice. And there was certainly no shortage of sincerely meant reconstruction dollars floating down to the Old proud South, so that it could rise again, but in a less belligerent way this time. .

As the gaunt-looking white man approached them – Crowley noted a woman and children in the background, equally shabby and ill-kempt – he reflected that those dollars were by no means reaching _everyone_, black or white.

The man was in his thirties, wearing Confederate Army boots and trousers, but with a labourer's shirt and waistcoat. Acknowledging Crowley with a look of mingled resentment and fear, he touched his forelock to Aziraphile.

"Begging pardon of y'all, but Virgil Caine is my name and I rode on the Danville train. That is, sirs, 'till Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again."

Aziraphile nodded. Charleston had been a hub of the old Southern railroad. Now only two tracks fed the wreck of the city, both requisitioned by the Federal Government. It must be a lean time for old railwaymen, especially since a loyalty clause applied that barred practically every able-bodied Southern man from seeking employment, at least until he could bring himself to swallow bile and swear an oath of allegiance to the Union.

Virgil Caine went on, eyes faraway

"In the winter of sixty-five we were hungry, just barely alive. I took the train to Richmond that fell, and I remember. I remember, oh so well, the night they drove old Dixie down…"

Aziraphile cut the soliloquy short.

"Here's fifty cents. All the small coin I have on me."

He relented, looking into Caine's eyes, and suddenly a dollar-fifty was there.

"And before you ask, my carpet-bag's at the hotel!" he added, as the old railway hand moved off with a nod of thanks. Crowley was sure he mttered something about _A Southern man don't need them around, anyhow!_ as he returned to his family.

"We'd better get off the street, Angel!" Crowley prompted. "Those slaves recognised us for what we really are, _Gros Bon Ange,_and now you've given charity to one panhandling deadbeat, they'll _all_ be homing in!"

"The sooner we can get out of this country, the _better_, Crowley". muttered the Gros Bon Ange.

"How long has it been now?"

"Fifty-nine for you, since sixty for me. And a short trip in forty-one. Eight years too long! I mean, Crowley, Leif Eriksson might have discovered this benighted country, but at least he kept quiet about it. Columbus and A'Merrick had to go and tell _everyone_!"

Crowley nodded, sympathetically.

His North American purgatory had begun with a peremptory demand from Hell that he drop everything in Europe and cross the Atlantic, with a roaming brief to "get in there and stir up trouble".

It had all begun promisingly enough, with a professionally satisfying bit of business with two so far unsuccessful evangelists called Brigham Young and Joseph Smith. Crowley had persuaded them that a _really_ successful attempt to make religion into a career required a Unique Selling Point, an angle on faith and belief that was new and innovative and which nobody else had thought of before. Christianity was all very well and had really taken off in Europe, but America was a new world with what would become a new people. Therefore a version of Christianity tailored to fit the needs and preoccupations of people born and brought up in the New World, who had never seen Europe in their lives, something lively and valid and relevant to Americans, would be a smash hit and result in thousands, nay, millions, of dollars flowing their way. Let's face it, it would only go to the Episcopalians or the Catholics otherwise, and they didn't _need_ those surplus dollars, did they?

And Crowley, masquerading as an Angel of the Light called Moroni**,**_(for the Bible states that the Devil may masquerade as an Angel of the Presence if it so suits his scheming. Demons have eagerly grasped this permission and describe it as a Licence To Practice)_with a nice simple set of props rigged up by Below's best special effects demons, had convinced Smith and Young that there was, indeed, a long-lost Third Testament of the Bible…

He had received a Deprecation and the Thanks of Hell for creating the Mormon religion. This had been responsible for a whining and reluctant Angel being dragged away from his comfortable flat in London, so as to be put in place to thwart any further Wiles on the Demon's part. Aziraphile had barely forgiven him for this.

In the following years, both the Angel and the Demon worked on the head of a romantic adventurer called John Brown. Aziraphile convinced him he was doing the Divine Will by helping the oppressed and enslaved make it to the non-slaving side of the Mason-Dixon line. Crowley provided guns and ammo, reasoning that this would go along quite nicely with his general instruction to make trouble across the fragile fault-line in American politics.

And then, on one raid to garner arms and ammo, Crowley had met a grinning Red in the Union armoury at Fort Sumner, sitting on a large barrel of gunpowder and smoking a cheroot unconcernedly, who had asked if she could join the fun.

In retrospect, letting the incarnation of War get involved had been over-egging the pudding, as the United States in 1861 had needed only the tiniest nudge before it suddenly became the Disunited States in a rather big way.

And some years down the line, they were sitting, or rather standing, in the result of Total War Between The States.

"So let's get this straight" Crowley said. "Red's gone back to Europe because she believes things are about to kick off again there, between France and Prussia. But Black and White are, for the moment, here, tidying up all the loose ends after the War."

"Glad she's gone!" Aziraphile said, decisively. "I had to do some serious talking to Palmerston and Gladstone and one or two others, to persuade them that any direct British involvement in the Civil War would be a Bad Thing. It is possible she'll forgive me for it. Within the next three centuries. That woman really wants an all-out global war. Getting the European Powers involved in this business would have spread it to Europe. You know how these things go, Crowley. Britain supports the Confederacy. So France comes in on the Union side. Britain declares war on France. Or vice-versa. And all the other European nations pick sides. All of a sudden it's a European war as well. Then it spreads to overseas colonies. World war. Red's aim."

"Speaking of which, I hear the French invasion of Mexico isn't going too well."

"Can't blame them, though. They want an American empire too, so they choose the least viable part of it, the bit that's struggling after the Spanish left, to "pacify". At a time when the only country that could put up any sort of opposition is embroiled in a civil war and can do nothing about it. The only problem is, the Mexicans united to kick the Spanish out. They've united to kick the French out too. They'll be gone inside a year."

They carried on crunching through the gravel and the loose stone.

"It'll take _years_ to get this right." Crowley said. "Red, Black and White did their job just too well here. General Stoneman was told to burn and ruin and destroy, and it looks like he fulfilled his orders to the very letter."

"Doesn't help there are too many conflicting players." agreed Aziraphile. "The Republicans want everything up and running and paying for itself again as soon as possible, and they agree they've got to marshal some sort of plan for reconstruction. But after Lincoln was assassinated, their attitudes hardened. They wanted all black slaves emancipated, and I bet that was to rub it into the locals as to who won the war, not out of any concern for the blacks."

"No aftercare." agreed Crowley." I mean, you have got a people who for over three hundred years have been taught to be subservient and docile. You can't just tap them on the shoulder and say, oi you, your shackles are thrown off, you're a free man now. I mean, you'd have thought they'd have built up gradually to it, told them "as of a date next year you will be free, this is what it will mean, listen carefully." All it means is, the whites can say, "I'm not your Massah now, I have no obligations to feed and clothe or even house you, all of that is over, and by the way get off my land, you're now trespassing. If you're still here in half an hour's time, I'll get men with guns and dogs to run you off."

The Angel and the Demon paused and pondered the human cost of the sudden, arbitrary, unprepared, emancipation of nearly a million slaves.

"Can't run very far as they're almost certainly trespassing on _somebody's_ land. Can't get jobs, as they're competing against three or four million poor redneck whites and demobbed soldiers. In any case, white employers prefer to hire other whites first. They can't move north, as the northern states have made it clear Christian charity and compassion stop at the Mason-Dixon line, and in any case with war industries winding down and demob kicking in, they have more than enough unemployed of their own. And even though they can now legally vote and stand for State congress and senate, how many of them know what it _means_ to vote? How many can even write their own names? It's a mess, Angel."

"Well, at least they've made a noble start, here in Virginia" the Angel reflected. "Nineteen members of the pre-war emancipated free black class, the educated ones, the intellectual ones, were elected to the State legislature."

"Yes, but how many blacks with university degrees are you going to find in Alabama? Or Arkansas?" Crowley probed. "And they only got elected here because the Republicans and the Military Government insisted some be found to stand. The moment the Army pulls out, Angel, the Southern Democrats are going to assert control. They won't accept black congressmen for thirty seconds! And they're working on ways to cancel out the black vote. This clause they want, that says only people who can write their own names, and read the ballot paper, can vote. That excludes ninety-five per cent of ex slaves. And you can be sure by the time black education kicks in, when most blacks can read and write, - and they're going to provide that _very_ slowly and _very_ reluctantly - they'll find some new way of excluding blacks from voting. Let's face it, angel. It's going to be a good hundred years before most blacks are fit to vote. Before they're fit for _anything._ Right now, what use are they to anyone? Before they get out of the slave mentality, before they get an education that's as good as the one the whites get, when they learn they're as good as the whites, and only the past keeps them in chains. They're starting out at a disadvantage and they've got some catching up to do. They won't be good for anything much until at least 1960. That's what I'm saying."**(6)**

Aziraphile digested this. He frowned.

"Well, yes, but that little _social club_ you set up…." He gave the demon an accusatory glare.

Crowley winced.

"Low blow, Angel. I still maintain I only asked for them to find some sort of disguise. Is it my fault if some bright spark suggested making robes out of bedsheets?"

"And the burning crosses? I have to tell you, that sort of thing isn't subtle. Or clever."

"I only said find something to light a fire with, it's getting cold out here. There's _lots_ of old wood lying around, angel. Did you never look into Joseph's workshop back in Nazareth? It's amazing how often the cross motif recurs in carpentry when you knock two bits of wood together!"

The Klu Klux Klan had turned out to be an embarrassment to Crowley. Hell had wanted some sort of underground guerrilla movement that would carry on the war and strike out of the night against the military government and local collaborators. But with the poor human material that was available, men who had not been called into the Confederate armies for one reason or another, Crowley realised to his horror that they were only interested in hitting an easier target. What was it the ludicrously named Grand Dragon had said…. "Y'all named Crow-Law? Hey, that kinda fits, y'all – the new laws for keeping the nigra in his place - call them the Jim Crow-Laws, y'all!"

So he had withdrawn from the KKK, although Hell had reprimanded him for setting the organisation up.

"I need a drink, Angel." Crowley concluded.

"I've got a bottle of Jim Beam in my hotel room, Crowley. It isn't _completely_ foul." the Angel agreed.

"Appreciated."

They rounded a corner. Night had fallen almost completely now. Aziraphile stopped suddenly and held back.

A column of baleful scarlet radiance was apparent behind the façade of a shattered building.

"I think that's for you." the Angel said, shuddering. "I'll wait here".

Crowley nodded. In his head he heard the summoning voice. But he spotted, in the further distance, a diplomatically correct distance away, an electric-blue pillar had formed and was also seeking.

"And that one's yours, I think. Hope there are no ex-slaves watching this, or they'll be _really_freaked out!"

Crowley sauntered over to find out why Beelzebub had come looking for him. He hoped it was a movement order. He'd seen enough of North America for several lifetimes. And he'd done enough of His Father Below's will to avoid a permanent posting back to Hell.

He hoped.

_WELL DONE, GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT._said the Metatron.

"Lord?" said Aziraphile, uncertainly. After the past eight years, he'd been expecting a rebuke. A big one.

_YOU HAVE SCORED A GREAT VICTORY. IN TIMES OF TRIAL, PEOPLE TURN TO RELIGION. AND THESE HAVE BEEN TIMES OF GREAT TRIAL. THE SUFFERING SLAVES HAVE BEEN EMANCIPATED, BUT WILL BE DENIED JUSTICE AND CIVIL RIGHTS. DENIED POLITICAL REPRESENTATION, DENIED THE MEANS OR THE PATH TO MATERAIL PROSPERITY, SUBJECT TO PERSECUTION BY THE AGENTS OF SATAN, THEY CAN ONLY TURN TO RELIGION AS CONSOLATION. WE WILL BE ASSURED OF THEIR IMMORTAL SOULS. AND MEN WILL RISE FROM AMONG THEIR NUMBERS WHO IN PREVIOUS TIMES WOULD HAVE BEEN ACCLAIMED AS SAINTS. THIS IS INDEED A GREAT VICTORY FOR US. HELL IS SHORT-SIGHTED, AS ALWAYS._

"Even, Lord, if they turn Mormon?" Aziraphile said, with as much of a vague suspicion of rebellion as his soul could muster. There was an embarrassed pause.

_DELIBERATIONS PROCEED AS TO WHETHER THE CHURCH OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS MAY BE ACCOUNTED PART OF THE BODY OF CHRIST._said the Metatron, with the vaguest suspicion of what on Earth might have been called shiftiness. _A HERETIC CHURCH MAY, AFTER ALL, BRING FORTH GOOD AND FAITHFUL CHRISTIANS WHO BELIEVE IN CORRECT DOCTRINE THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN. YOU WILL BE ADVISED AS TO OUR DECISION IN DUE COURSE . BUT THE MORMONS, YOU WILL FIND, WILL HAVE THEIR OWN DOCTRINE AS TO THE STATUS OF NON-WHITE PEOPLE.__**(7)**_

"Very good, Lord. Do you have any other duties for me?"

_I AM PLEASED TO TELL YOU YOUR WORK IN NORTH AMERICA IS COMPLETE, AZIRAPHILE. YOU ARE TO RETURN TO EUROPE WITH ALL SPEED._

Aziraphile's heart leapt. Back to his flat above the bookshop in London…

_NOT EXACTLY, AZIRAPHILE. I'M AFRAID YOU'RE GOING TO FRANCE. _

"France." Aziraphile said, flatly.

_YES. FRANCE. IS THERE A PROBLEM, AZIRAPHILE?_

"No, lord. France it is."

_WELL, CRAWWLEY, _Beelzebub began, _OUR FATHER BELOW IS EXCEEDING PLEAZZZED WITH WHAT YOU HAVE ACCOMPLIZHED HERE. YOU HAVE CONZIGNED AN ENTIRE PEOPLE TO POVERTY AND MARGINAL LIVING. THEY WILL TAKE THEIR FRUZZZTRATIONS OUT AS MEMBERZ OF THE KU KLUX KLAN, AND IN ANGER, PRIDE AND HATE, WILL TORMENT AND LYNCH THEIR BLACK NEIGHBOURZ AND EVEN THOUGH THE WHITE RED NECK WILL BE LOWA ND POOR, HE WILL ZEEK TO KEEP THE BLACK LOWER ZTILL RATHER THAN TO ADVANZE HIMZELF. AND THEN WE WILL HAVE THEM IN HELL. THEIR ZOULZ ARE OURZZZ!_

_WHAT YOU HAVE ZTARTED HERE WILL LAZZZT FOR A HUNDRED YEARZ. OUR FATHER IN HELL THANKZ YOU. _

_AND NOW YOUR WORK IN THIZ PLAZZZE IZZZ DONE. _

_YOU WILL LEAVE THIS COUNTRY AND PROZEED WITH ALL ZPEED TO FRANZE. YOU WILL BE INZTRUCTED. _

_FAREWELL, CROWLEY, AND HELL'Z THANKZ BE WITH YOU!_

France, thought Crowley, bloody France. Ah well, at least it means good brandy and decent food. Better stock up on soap before I go, though. And toilet paper. No doubt the Angel will follow me there. Heigh-ho.

The Angel and the Demon took ship back to the Old World from New Orleans, a city which, while not untouched by war, still retained something of the glamour and the splendour of the antebellum South. Just once, in the dim twilight of a Dixie evening with the magnolia on the breeze, Aziraphile fancied he sensed something watching and discreetly following them. He didn't like the shape or feel of it, and remarked as much to Crowley.

Crowley shrugged.

"Yeah. Vampire. Thriving colony here. They know we're here and they're wondering _why._ Leave well alone, Angel. They don't concern us and they'll soon realise that. Got somebody here I'd like you to meet."

Aziraphile started, then shrugged back. Crowley was right. Heaven's official line was that vampires were ungodly things of Hell and should be exterminated, but in practice, were left alone as they tended to take only criminals and degenerates, arguably cleaning the world up a little bit with every bite and helping Hell's own to their eternal reward.

"Got somebody I'd like you to meet".

Marie Leveau was a startlingly handsome mixed-race woman in her forties with a look of perpetual amusement, as if she'd seen the cosmic joke. Technically she could have been somebody's property, but she was as free a woman as you'd find anywhere. For some reason the white authorities let her be, as if she was too much trouble. Which of course she was: she was a Witch-Queen. _The_ Witch-Queen, in fact. And in the past years of doubt and difficulty, she had ministered to _everyone_. Even the occasional switched on white, who wanted to know if he'd survive the War. She dealt with people as she found them, and as one who dealt with the various entities of voudou every day of her life, an Angel and a Demon walking into her temple together was surprising but not startling. She'd seen too much.

"Whoo, boy!" she said, laughing. "Ain't you two jist the odd couple!"

"Thought I'd drop by to say goodbye." Crowley said, diffidently. "And to introduce you to a friend…"

"I can see who _you_ are!" she said, looking directly at Aziraphale. "_GrosBonAnge,_right?"

"That's a bit _personal_, I think?" said the angel. He always felt uncomfortable around witches. They saw too deeply.

"And walking in alongside ol' Legba himself!" she laughed. "I tell you two good ol'boys, you has some history behind you! And a whole lot more _ahead_ of you! Man, I seen some things! This 'ol world will be _saved_by you, you know? But right now, you is goin' back to Yoorp. You has an appointment with the Goat. And that goat done going to freak your minds out. Him and the Beast who is to come. Now willl you boys have a glass of Jack Daniels with this voodoo chile before you leave?"

Marie appreciated being able to propriate her particular gods at such close quarters. At least it meant she could share the bottle without their getting offended.

Crowley just wanted a drink in convivial company. Aziraphale sighed. The boat didn't sail until tomorrow, after all. And there was something about this laughing vibrant woman that was worth drinking with…

* * *

**(1) **Irresistable. Even if utterly forbidden on FanFic. The _real_ tale of what happened to Louis Lestadt is of course recounted in Anne Rice's first book _**Interview with the Vampire. **_Don't shout this too loud as Anne gets a bit precious about fanfic – even if it's an incidental detail in somebody else's story. Her vampires also get a shout-out at the end - I think there's a bit in one of her New Orleans vampire books where the vamps get spooked out by angels and demons who are visiting town for entirely unconnected reasons. Being paranoid vampires, they fear it's a divine round-up of entities who don't quite fit, being neither of Heaven nor of Hell...

**(2) **Marie Leveau: the _**rea**_l Witch Queen (high) of New Orleans.

**(3)** Reference the Santana track _Jingo-lo-ba_ – not just a Latin American beat with guitar solo, but a voodoo ritual set to music.

**(4)** Crowley is voicing the viewpoint of revisionist economic historians of recent years, who have argued that slavery in the USA was not as bad as it has been painted, that a lot of American perceptions have been misguided by the fact the Union won the Civil War and some of its more sensationalist wartime propagandas are taught as unchallenged fact in American schools. Indeed, they suggest that there are aspects of slavery that today's American industry and employment might profitably learn from in its quest to be more efficient and competitive. Slavery is viewed by economists of this inclination as benevolent capitalism, and its built-in "welfare state" is not disparaged with the usual venom economists of this sort reserve for state intervention…

**(5)**Crowley would visit Iraq and Afghanistan in the early twenty-first century and marvel that Americans had such short memories and such an optimistic belief in the rightness of capitalism and the essential good nature of humanity. He'd also seen the optimistic Marshall Plan in action after WW2.

**(-)**Comment deleted as gratuitous, potentially offensive, and worst of all _**unoriginal.**_

**(6)**Crowley is being prophetic here. As the Military governments pulled out of the southern states, the Democratic Party assumed control just about everywhere on an unashamed white superiority ticket. They couldn't restore slavery, but they could impose controls and checks on black life that were almost as good as – the infamous Jim Crow laws. Thus, while the North looked the other way, the Democrats ran the Southern states in a way that even the South Africans learnt from when codifying apartheid laws. It took until JFK and Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's to force change on the Southern Democrats. Civil Rights movements and sympathetic Presidents forced change, and also precipitated two enlightened Southern Democratic Presidents, in Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

**(7)**They did. The Mormons followed the post-Noachic doctrine, the one that said the lesser sons of Noah who fathered the black, brown, yellow _and red_ skinned peoples of the world after the Flood, were inferior and were there to be the servants of the superior White-skinned people. Indeed, Mormon doctrine went one better and denied black people had souls _at all_. The LDS only jettisoned this doctrine in the middle 1970's, when the feared Internal Revenue Service threatened to take away its tax-free status for preaching illegal racist doctrine and making the US Government a party to racial bigotry. The Mormons caved in. This is a good one to throw back at any Mormon missionaries you meet. If they really believed this was God-given doctrine, then surely they'd have gone with God rather than Mammon and taken the tax hit? And if they can be forced to accept one part of the doctrine is wrong, then they have implicitly accepted that they are fallible. So what else could they be wrong about? The Mormon religion was not alone in this interpretation of biblical scripture, it has to be said. The same post-Noachic doctrine was at the heart of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, that used this Biblical exegesis to justify apartheid and subjugation of black Africans; Christian churches down the ages have used it to justify racial segregation and slavery.


	10. Behind The Veil

_**Behind The Veil**_

_**The long-awaited next instalment, in which the supernatural duo are sent to France.**_

_Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvelous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed. (Eliphaz Levi, Introduction to Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual_ , translated from the French by Arthur Edward Waite)

_**This episode's warning to potentially traduced, libelled and misrepresented practitioners of religion or related processes: this time it's the Freemasons, OK? you have been warned and the author reserves his right not to enter into any correspondence. **_

_The Seminary of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1834._

"The verdict, under God, is pronounced and final." said the grave-faced canon lawyer who was chairing the clerestory court. "After having heard the evidence and examined the conscience of the accused, we find the case guilty on all counts. Deacon Alphonse Louis Constant is guilty of the sin of intellectual pride, in that he challenged the teachings of Mother Church constantly and without humility. He did not repent nor confess the sin and remains obdurate in his heresy. The court has also found Deacon Alphonse Louis Constant guilty of the sin of fornication. We have taken into acount he has not yet submitted to the final vows of priesthood, or the sentence would be sterner. But there is no recourse open to us save expulsion from the seminary." The church lawyer paused to allow the sigh of horror to run round the assembled student priests, summoned here to witness the punishment meted out to one of their own who had wlfully transgressed. All eyes were on the defendent, who stood before the clerestory tribunal, looking defiantly at the lawyer, his head held high and eyes firmly blazing. Otherwise, he was in the simple robes of a seminary deacon, a monastic robe tied at the waist in a white cord.

"Have you anything to say?"

Constant, tall, bulky, twenty-four years old, glared at the judge and nodded.

"I accept the sentence." he said, in a loud unafraid voice. "But I would like to request the court..." he paused for a moment. "Excommunicate me! It will make it so much easier to pursue a new direction if I am purged of the luggage of a religion which is immaterial to me..."

"_Get him out of here!"" _Two burly seminary porters hastened to obey, gripping the new-minted heretic by the arms and hustling him away. Despite the indignity, he grinned.

A friend from the seminary was able to see him off at the door.

"So where will you go, Alphonse?" the friend asked, anxiously. "The Church is closed to you now."

"I have already started writing pamphlets for money." Constant remarked, shrugging. "That was how they caught me. They liked neither the ideas nor that I was being paid for them. There is an editor out there who will print my ideas and pay me for them. Now I can bill myself as a defrocked priest, notoreity will add to my price. I will not starve!"

The student priest smiled uncertainly.

"Go with God, Alphonse."

Alphonse Constant smiled serenely.

"Oh, I intend to. Don't worry about that." The student priest watched his former friend until he was out of sight, in the throng of Parisians along the Rue Cassette.

_1848. The St Lazare prison. Paris. _

Alphonse Constant was pushed out of the prison door into its bleak outer courtyard, with the miserable stunted trees and the milling,aimless, mass of wives and relatives of internees who were awaiting news, or petitioning for visiting rights. Heads had looked up in expectation as the prison's Judas door creaked open and fixed on him, then fallen away in dissappointment realising he wasn't the released prisoner they wanted to see.

Constant hitched up his poor bag of possessions, then made his way through the crowd to the outer gate. In this year of revolutions, there was simply no prison room for all the arrested revolutionaries to be processed. A mere author of scurrilous pamphlets read by few was small fry, and could safely be discharged to free space in a cell.

He smiled a grim smile. _**L'Evangile du Peuple**__**1**_ _**(1) **__**and Le Testament de la Liberté **_had landed him in here as seditious, revolutionary and possibly blasphemous tracts. _**La Mère de Dieu **_was, in the eyes of the church authorities, even worse. But he'd been released in a so called amnesty, provoked partly by the need to appear merciful and partly by the fact the prisons were bursting at the seams.

Constant, a big bear of a man, bearded, balding and with piercing eyes, walked on through Paris to see about getting a bed for the night somewhere. Pamphlet writing was a steady living, but it was beginning to bore him. Maybe it was time to start practicing some of the ideas coming to him concerning a new religion, one that bypassed the teetering structures of Christianity and one where anyone could receive the _gnosis_ directly, according to their wisdom and abilities. He was sure such believers existed in the world. But given the vindictive nature of the Church, they would not seek publicity. Where to find them?

_**1853. England. **_

At least the English truly respected freedom of conscience and freedom of thought, reflected Alphonse Constant. He relaxed in the comfortable armchair in his host's library, and carried on reading about the secret doctrine underlying Christianity, the idea of the Society of the Rose Cross. Marvelling that they had heard nothing at all of this in the seminary, the former candidate for priesthood read on, enthralled. More pieces of the jigsaw were falling into place.

The idea that there was an unbroken continuity of true religion, true worship, true gnosis, coming down to us in an unbroken line from the makers of the Pyramids and the architect of Solomon's Temple, preserved by organisations as varied as the Knights Templar, the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians... Constant's head was dizzy with the possibilities.

His Lordship had been more than generous with support, resources and time. Constant was against the aristocracy on general terms. But even he had to reflect that some aristos, men blessed with an independent income that took away the need for work and which freed up their time for study and contemplation, were far more likely than the common worker to be part of that unbroken chain of wisdom. _Not every aristo is an empty-headed frivulous fop, Alphonse. The best of them are true servants of the gnosis and merit our true unforced honour. _

And Milord Lytton had been assidious and spared no expense in his research, Constant had to admit. One of the purposes His Lordship was using it for was undoubtedly _frivolous_, but Constant was a writer himself and was currently making a living as the London correspondent of a Parisian daily paper. He understood the compulsion of the imaginative man, to write and to communicate ideas via words on paper.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, baronet, Tory MP, aesthete, intellectual, poet, playwright and novelist, was equally drawn to the big bear-like Frenchman, tonsured and heavily bearded. Their friendship would last a lifetime and take several surprising turns.**(2) **The author of _**Pelham, **__**T**__he Last Days of Pompeii_ , _Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes_ and _Harold, the Last of the Saxons_, among other things, already had a growing literary reputation. His esoteric interest, especially in Rosicrucianism, informed several of his works. The novel _**Zanoni**__**3**__**(3) **_was especially blatant as a manifesto for his maturing occult ideas, which he was keen to discuss with Alphonse Constant.

Bulwer-Lytton would have been gratified, and in one case perhaps horrified, to realise how many long-term seeds his writings planted, with consequences echoing well into the twentieth century. But for now, in the autumn of 1853 with a London fog closing in, he is content to discuss mysteries over a brandy with the strange but congenial French journalist, who was once an unfrocked priest.

_**Paris, winter 1867. **_

"Apparently, it's down here somewhere, Crowley." the Angel said. **(4)** He and the demon had been recalled from North America by their respective sides to locate, identify and assess an occult threat. At Crowley's instigation, they had rented suites at the smartest hotel in town, charging them to expenses, on the grounds that if he'd been put to inconvenience, Hell was bloody well going to going to foot the bill. For both of them, if necessary.

Crowley sniffed the psychic atmosphere. _" Là-bas." _he murmured, in confirmation. "I haven't sensed it this strongly since the humans started worshipping Moloch, Angel!"

He paused in the grim narrow little alley. This was a part of Paris that was on the list for demolition and rebuilding: the last of Hausmann's civic improvements designed to create broad boulevards impossible to barricade against the appointed forces of law and order. Narrow twisting passages like this, the old Paris, had been too easy for rebels and revolutionaries to defend in 1848. They offered too much scope for unpleasant surprises and anyway served as lodging for unpleasant and unwholesome things. And besides, Hausmann's vision looked prettier and more spacious, it ws impossible to deny. You would not hear of depraved things like... _devil-worship... _going on in those parts of town that had been gentrified and cleansed of the unreliable and feckless poor.

A dank winter mist coalesced around the legs of Angel and Demon. Rats chittered and scurried in the dark. The Angel's face set in a grim line as he wrapped his opera cloak closely about him. Low chanting could be heard coming from somewhere in the distance. A bat swooped low, attracted by a presence it could not identify but which it sensed it wanted to be close to. The Angel shuddered and brushed it away. Crowley shook his head and made a chittering noise. The bat obediently came to his wrist and hung inverted from it, like a Satanic version of falconry.

"Tell them I'm on the case." Crowley said to it. "Myself and a... fellow agent... are about to enter the premises. I'll write a report later. Got that?"

The bat chittered and flew off.

"Messenger bats." Crowley explained. "Not very bright. But Below's latest idea to improve communications. It'll have seen you in the alley but it'll have taken you to be kosher, as you're with me. It won't look any further."

"well, let's get down there, then. Get it over with." said Aziriphale, decisively. They moved slowly and carefully towards the source of the chanting. A Judas window in a door opened to them. The face of a typical doorkeeper, not very bright but radiating the bloody-minded determination to keep you locked out all night if needs be, appeared. He cleared his throat.

"Without the temple of light..." he intoned. Then he stopped, and looked expectantly at Crowley.

"Oh God, one of _those_." sighed the demon. The doorkeeper shook his head.

"Nice try, friend, but wrong!"

"Give us a clue, then!" Aziraphile said, eapsperated. The doorman shook his head, grinning at their discomfort. Crowley, more worldly wise than the Angel, proffered a ten-franc note. The doorman looked speculatively at it. Then shook his head.

"Nah, mate. Let you in without the password and Mr Levi, the High and Ineffable Grand Wossname, he'll whip the old consecrated sacrificial knife out and they'll be garters, won't they?"

"We're expected." the Angel said, shortly. With extreme reluctance, another ten franc note appeared.

"In fact, they're calling us now" said Crowley, curtly. "Well, me, anyway."

"Nice try, friend, but the Devil uually manifests himself right in the Temple, dun'e, and he don't usually come knocking on the bloody door for admission. I mean, me, I'd _know_!" the doorman said, taking the two ten-franc notes.

"No. It's the _other_ side that knocks at the door and waits for admission." the Angel said, lips pursed to invisibility. **(5) **

"Whereas the people I represent might just kick the door in..."

The doorman paused.

"Tell you what I'll do, gents. You both looks like the sort of gentleman of quality what Mr Levi, the wise and ineffable Grand Wossname, likes to see in his Temple. But I can't go letting you in, not if you don't know the password. So here's what I'll do. I sez to you, right, _"Without the Temple of Light..."_ then I stops. Then you comes back with the response _"Then I am only whale-shit." _Then I sez again _"Which without the Light of Illumination"_ and stops. Then you conclude with _"Is that thing which sinks lower than anything else in God's creation." _Then I lets you in."

"You're making it up!" Crowley accused him. The doorkeeper grinned,

"Well, mr Levi did say all this is new and I should use my own initiative." he said. " _Delegation_, he called it. I'm quite proud of it myself!"

"I've had enough of this." Crowley decided. He focused...

And a few minutes later was retrieving his ten francs back from a catatonic wide-eyed doorman.

"Were the maggots _really _necessary, Crowley?" the angel asked, fastidiously brushing something off his sleeve.

"No, but you've got to keep in practice." replied the Demon. "Want your money back?"

Aziraphile tucked the ten francs away in the Doorman's top pocket, and implanted a command to him to forget.

And so they entered the Temple of Light. They passed seperate changing rooms for men and women.

"They're not _naked _in there, are they?" asked the Angel, anxiously.

"They wear robes, as I understand it." said Crowley, shrugging. "It's hard to wear badges of rank on naked bodies. How would you know who's a Lord High Ippsissimus of the Abyss and who's a Neophyte if you didn't? Hard for these people to tell their Art from their Elbirez at the best of times!"

Ever since Freemasonry had emerged in the late seventeenth century, pretending it stood in unbroken line to the secrets of the builders of Solomon's Temple, Crowley had seen all the possibilities for spreading sin that it represented and had cheerfully encouraged the movement. Groups of the emerging middle classes gathering together in secret to play at spirituality, pat each other on the backs, self-select new members, to encourage each other in the belief that they were somehow _better_ than the rest of the human race, and to plot in secret and manipulate things in their favour. What was there for a demon not to like? Crowley had devised silly handshakes that to his astonishment had caught on, and had also hit on the whole rolling-up-the-trouser-leg business because he, Crowley, liked seeing self-important lawyers and merchants and politicians choosing to look ridiculous _of their own free will. _As well as vanity, pride, avarice, greed and looking ridiculous _inside_ the Masonic Hall, Crowley also relished the suspicion and mistrust aroused _outside_ the Temple, among those who would never be invited to join (women of all classes and men of the less socially advantaged sort.) Outside, people mistrusted the Freemasons, sensing they were being screwed, robbed and swindled by a bunch of self-selecting bastards who had got together to scratch each other's backs , help each other climb the greasy pole, and get off scot-free in court, at everyone else's expense.

Crowley, a 33º Grand Descended Master Of The Scotch Bonnet Rite With Thistle,**(6), **had been given a Depreciation for Freemasonry. Hell had been very pleased.

This was all very well, but again, Crowley had under-estimated the ability of the human race to think and be imaginatively creative. Freemasonry spread and evolved and schismed. The Grand European Lodges of France and Germany became engines of political dissent. And Crowley had been appalled afterwards to discover a French nobleman, the Duc d'Orleans, had hijacked the French lodge to destabilise the country to the -point where he could depose his cousin and become Louis XVII. Only by the end of the eighteenth century, France needed little destabilising. Orleanist meddling combined with economic woes saw the wrong people taking over the French revolution. It had only ever been intended to be a bloodless coup with one King replacing another. The nobility would have benefited most and concessions would have trickled down to the embryonic middle class, the bourgeouisie. But when the price of bread went up tenfold and the peasants and workers realised they had muscle to flex, it all went wrong for Orleans. The peasants had not been taken into account – they were expected to be docile and bovine and take what their betters deemed good for them.

And in Italy, Freemasonry hybridised with other groups. _Cosa Nostra. I Carbonieri. _The virtues of silence, vows of obedience, a strict heirarchy and a culture of self-help blended with the Italian concept of family and obedience to a patriarchal figure. Something new emerged in Italy. And it was to win further demerits and depreciations for Crowley.

And then there were the ones who thought deeply and strove to remove even the last shreds of lip-service to Christianity that remained in Freemasonry. There had been the defrocked priest in Bavaria, Adam Weishaupt. And now it was the self-proclaimed defrocked priest in France, Alphonse Constant. Aziraphile had checked. Constant had only ever been kicked out of training for the priesthood after "theological disagreements". He was still a Catholic and could accept the Sacraments as he chose. Only he wasn't calling himself Alphonse Constant these days.

"_Amen, malo a nos libera sed, tentationem in inducas nos ne et. Nostris debitoribus dimittimus nos et sicutnostra debita nobis dimitte et..."_

Sweating in the thick red gown and horned cap, Eliphaz Levi intoned the words of the service. He had heard that witches of old had cursed by reciting the Bible backwards, this being deliberate inversion and as music to the ears of Satan. He had changed his name from the Christian names his parents had given him, and which a dying Church had baptised onto him. He had thought long and hard about it. He had realised that the pentad, five syllables, split up three-then-two, was the most memorable. The rhythm of the name, the way it was almost sung a well as spoken, made it stick in the mind.

_Eliphaz Levi. El-i-phaz Le-vi. I_n Hebrew, said to be the language of the Angels. The Leader and Teacher. He concentrated on the rhythm of the Latin words. If the deliberate blasphemy did not draw a Demon to the sanctuary, it scarcely mattered. The show and the pantomime was good for the congregants. Lord Lytton looked part horrified and part entranced, which should bring in some more of his money. And if a demon were to show, it wiuld be the icing on the cake...

"_...hodie nobis da quotidianum nostrum panem. Terra in et caelo in sicut, tua voluntas Fiat."_

Levi saw, or rather sensed, the two new peope entering the Temple. That fool on the door let them in. He would have words later.

" _tuum regnum adveniat. Tuum nomen sanctificetur, caelis in es qui, noster Pater! Fiat! Fiat! FIAT!"_

The two newcomers were in street clothes. They strode unflinchingly forward, the black-clad one unceremoniously pushing a celebrant aside as he did so.

Crowley noted the pentagram inside the circle, and shook his head. He faced the red-robed high Priest and stared at him.

Levi, slightly un-nerved, had the sense to csrry on speaking Latin.

"How did you enter the Temple?" he demanded. "How did you get in? _Quo Vadis?" _

Crowley grinned and took his time answering. To the thirteen congregrants, it would have sounded like part of the Ritual.

"My associate here is an Angel of the Presence." he said. And then he strode forwards and Changed again. The congregation screamed. Somebody retched.

"_Fool! Do not give it more power!" _shouted Levi. Meanwhile, the thing that was also Crowley oozed towards the altar.

"As for me!" it said, "Just think of me as the Lurker at the Threshold. Your doorkeeper saw the good sense of letting me in!"

He beckoned Levi forward. "Do feel free to carry on." he invited the High Priest, in a whisper. "We'll play the game, we'll go when you banish us."

Levi took a deep breath. Fortunately, the celebrants seemed inclined to mistake his fear for anger.

"Foul fiend, hearken! I confine thee to this circle that ye may not leave its bounds nor may ye leave until thou art banished..."

Anthony Crowley stood before them, now an indeterminate figure in black, pointing at Levi and beckoning him closer. He summoned up the appearance of flame around hom, partly to awe and partly to obscure his figure more. They'd seen a glimpse of Dark Crowley, maggots and all; this was a Manifestation he did sparingly because of the effect the maggots had on a Savile Row suit. Now just seeing a huge indeterminiate dark shape wreathed in flickering frame should really get to their petty French bourgeouise imaginations...

Crowley folded his arms and grinned at the effect he was having. This was fun. He heard the Angel say, testily, "Don't ask me. I'm only here as an observer. Look, if he gets out of hand, I tell him off. That's all I can promise. Normally he listens when I rebuke him. Now I'll just stand over here and observe, shall I?"

"Why have I been summoned?" Crowley demanded, putting Satanic harmonics into his voice. He heard the Angel tut. He looked over. Aziraphile was in deep conversation with a couple of robed celebrants, reassuring them they were in no real danger.

"You've all seen the cartoons, yes? The ones where somebody has got a little demon on one shoulder appealing to his bad side, and a little angel on the other shoulder whispering into the ear of his good side? Well, we're the _original_ Angel and the Demon, on opposite shoulders of the whole human race..."

"_Vous etes anglais, monsieur l'Ange?" _

"What?" Aziraphile was taken aback.

"Well, you speak French like an Englishman..."

And so Crowley attended his first Black Mass. He felt completely at home and wondered how to spread this new devil-worshipping sort of religious expresion. Below would be gratified. Several monstrous egos in the lowest levels needed continual stoking, for one thing. It would draw more human souls down to a different sort of afterlife. And given the lurid stuff he'd been told in the briefings, apart from the maggots, nothing _gross _had happened: no animal sacrifice, and certainly no...

"I just hope there isn't going to be a naked orgy afterwards." the Angel said, primly.

"Mais non, monsieur l'Ange!" said a shocked French voice, "That is not _seemly_!"

"They do that sort of thing in the _maisons closées_." said another French voice. "For _sensation_. We are respectable seekers after truth!"

Aziraphile reminded himself that even in France, Victorian morality prevailed. (Although Levi heard the comment about nudity and orgies and thought "Hmmmm." )

**_There will be more! _**

* * *

**(1) **"The Gospel of the People"

**(2) **One of the ironies is that this aesthete, a boy who had hated boarding school because of its emphasis on hated sport, lived at Craven Cottage, Fulham, an estate where what had once been his house was pulled down about fifty years later to make way for Fulham FC's football stadium. A discreet blue plaque on the wall of the football club commemorates the association with one of England's minor literary greats.

_**Zanoni **_deals with the Immortals, the Eternals, beings who have been in the world since the beginning, one of whom is prepared to sacrifice his immortality for love of a mortal woman. "It so chanced that some years ago, in my younger days, whether of authorship or life, I felt the desire to make myself acquainted with the true origins and tenets of the singular sect known by the name of Rosicrucians."

**(4) **A later novel dramatising Eliphas Levi's occult temple and its rituals was called "_La Bas" - __**"Down There". **_This was largely a melodramatic farrago about the Black Mass and its effect on the human soul. The tale of a young man trying to rescue his love from the grip of an occult temple, only to fall into its clutches himself, is believed to have influenced Dennis Wheatley to write _**the Devil Rides Out. **_

**(5) **Ref. Holman Hunt's classic portrayal of Christ in the painting**_ The Light of the World_**, where Jesus, like any other good supernatural entity, has to wait at the door for permission to enter.

**(6) **He had reasoned that he should be able to pull rank on just about everyone in Freemasonry, and had had the robes and apron made up specially. Scotch Bonnets are a very potent form of chili and Crowley decreed their use in the corresponding ordeal for postulants to the rank. And the Scotch Bonnet Rite is, believe me, an **_ordeal _**_. _


End file.
